


I Can Survive in Space

by Yllekann



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Rebels
Genre: Angst, Binary code, Cannon compliant, Chopper and K-2 have a complicated relationship, Droid PTSD...?, Droid blindness, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Jabba is his usual lazy self, Orphans, Seriously what is this?, The sarcasm is strong with this one, adorableness, droid repairs, grumpy old men are grumpy, overly technical terminology, smugglers, where am i going with this?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-12-14
Packaged: 2018-09-19 09:23:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 25,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9432644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yllekann/pseuds/Yllekann
Summary: Introducing... THE ROGUE ONE FANFIC THAT ABSOLUTELY NO ONE ASKED FORWhen Jabba the Hutt hears of Scariff's destruction, he sends his best droid smuggler to the planet's former location to search for astromechs.  The only problem is that both of them got much more than they bargained for: an injured Imperial security droid with a serious sarcasm problem.





	1. The Impossible Assignment

Years ago, the first-class cabin of the commandeered Imperial freighter was beautiful. Created with high-ranking inspection officers in mind, it was designed with luxury as its first priority. At one point, the velvety wallpaper, soft couch cushions, and sheets of the tall, four-poster bed were all a deep, royal blue, every last surface polished until cleaning droids could see their reflections wherever they turned.  
But now, 40 years after the freighter was built and a mere nine after it was hijacked, the cabin is, in short, a terrible mess. Heaps of clothes in various states of cleanliness litter the floor, mixed with blaster power packs, boxes of nonperishable provisions, and too many unidentifiable tools and components to count. The formerly well-maintained furniture is scuffed, chipped, and covered in layers of unidentifiable grime. And the sole occupant of the cabin is far from an Imperial inspection officer.  
**********  
It takes at least a full minute of high-pitched beeping from the communicator on the cluttered end table to wake Aaron Arkadian. Not so much as bothering to open his eyes, the middle-aged man fumbles for the ancient device, his short, thick fingers groping for a button that will silence the irritating noise. Instead, they find the edge of an ornate, glass-fronted picture frame, precariously balanced on the corner of his small table.  
Before Aaron can react, the delicate frame falls to the thickly-carpeted cabin floor, bounces once, and lies still.  
With a start, Aaron jumps out of bed, falls to his hands and knees, and scrabbles frantically on the floor to retrieve the priceless square of glass and wood. Eyes wild with panic, he scoops it up, carefully inspecting every centimeter for damage. The faces of his wife and son smile up at him, completely unaware of the near-disaster that had just befallen them.  
"You're OK," Aaron murmurs as he hugs the aged picture close to his chest.  
'But they'll never be OK again, not really,' a small voice whispers in the back of his head. 'They died nine years ago, thanks to the blasted war.'  
He hated them, Imperials and Rebels alike, hated them for forcing him into exile, for their apparent need to recruit everyone in the galaxy to one side or another, even for their overly bright uniforms (Are they TRYING to get shot?). But most of all, he hated them for the explosion, the single grenade blast that had laid waste to the only home he had ever known.  
Swallowing hard, Aaron forces his attention back to reality.  
He returns the frame to its original position, then grabs the communicator, its irritating, high-pitched beep still ringing painfully throughout the tiny cabin. It's a priority vid-call from Jabba the Hutt.  
He sighs heavily. Every communication from Jabba is marked as priority; it's probably just another complaint about his slow deliveries or bad attitude. But he must answer quickly; Jabba doesn't like to be kept waiting.  
Hurriedly, Aaron accepts the call, and a tiny hologram of Jabba and his translator droid, C2M9, appears. Distractedly, Aaron observes that the protocol droid has been fitted with a restraining bolt, dents of all shapes and sizes covering its silver, metal shell. The socket where its right photo receptor should have been is covered by a transparent, plastic sheet, bare wires clearly visible underneath.  
'Jabba must have gotten angry with this one, too,' he surmises grimly.  
It certainly hadn't been the first time that the gangster had maimed, or even terminated, an unfortunate robot that had made a mistake or gotten in his way. He would hate to see how Jabba treats his organic servants, let alone his enemies.  
"Jabba," Aaron says curtly by way of greeting.  
The slug-like alien snaps a few words in his language at the terrified-looking translator droid.  
Aaron knows when droids are anxious. If he made a credit every time he intimidated one into getting that trapped, helpless look, he would be rich enough to disappear into the outer rim forever. Of course, Aaron works for Jabba—he earns a thousand credits for such things.  
"Aaron Arkadian," says C2M9, its digital voice quavering as its single remaining electronic eye focuses on a point just to the left of the man's face, "my best droid smuggler."  
Jabba pauses, adjusting his position on his cushioned dais.  
"Scariff has been destroyed."  
"How?" Aaron asks before he can stop himself. "Was it some kind of asteroid collision?"  
"Oh, you know me better than that," C2M9 translates Jabba's crude dialect. "Would I ever take the time to contact you about a mere asteroid collision? No, Imperial weaponry was responsible for this."  
'There's no way,' Aaron thinks fiercely. 'The Imperials may be powerful, but there's absolutely no way that they could destroy an entire world.'  
Then again, the infamous gangster has spies hidden in many key Rebel and Imperial strongholds. If anyone would hear of such a powerful weapon, it would be him.  
Beneath his shock and confusion, Aaron knows that he must seem nonchalant.  
"What does this have to do with me?" he asks casually, perching on the edge of his unmade bed.  
"My supply of astromech droids has depleted considerably,“ Jabba replies through C2M9. "They're disappearing left and right; even my translator's counterpart vanished last night without a trace."  
At this, C2M9 flinches slightly, his eye momentarily flicking toward Jabba.  
"I blame the sand people personally," the alien gangster continues, oblivious as he sips from a tall glass of something bright blue, "but regardless, this shortage is a major inconvenience."  
Aaron nods carefully, guessing where this is headed.  
"The Imperial installation on Scariff had a couple hundred short-range fighters in reserve," Jabba continues, stretching lazily on his dais. "Even the newest pilot knows that where there are fighters, there are always navigator astromechs."  
When it becomes apparent that his employer isn't going to spell it out for him, Aaron finishes the gangster's thought.  
"And you want me to go to Scariff. You want me to search the area for any droids that could have survived whatever this new weapon does."  
"Yes, that's the idea."  
"You're asking me to venture into completely uncharted territory," Aaron points out, sensing opportunity. "Any number of things could go wrong. This job is going to cost you extra."  
"Oh, Aaron," Jabba croons in his language, his words repeated in C2M9's still quavering, robotic voice, "we can discuss your bonus after you have proven your worth."  
'I have proven my worth,' Aaron thinks, furious. 'I've proven my worth again and again; I've brought you more droids than any smuggler who's ever worked for you!'  
But Jabba the Hutt is not one to cross.  
"Very well," Aaron replies, keeping his voice devoid of inflection. "Setting course for Scariff."  
"I always knew you were a smart one," Jabba replies with an almost fatherly pride. "Now don't disappoint me."  
And then the call terminates with a colorful explosion of light motes.


	2. Something Unexpected

Frustrated, Aaron places the communicator back on the night table, exits his cabin, and practically stomps into the cramped cockpit.  
This room, too, is a shadow of its former glory. A thin layer of dust has settled over the copilot's seat (aside from his robotic prisoners, who are not allowed anywhere near the this room, Aaron always travels alone), and the formerly well-polished controls are covered in fingerprint smudges and bits of food. Aaron isn't entirely sure which ones are even functional.  
'If I find an astromech on Scariff,' he tells himself, 'I'll have it check the ship's diagnostics.'  
With that thought, he keys in the coordinates of the now nonexistent planet, the former location of the infamous Imperial data vault.  
***  
To the smuggler's great frustration, it takes about two hours to reach what remains of Scarrif.  
'This freighter's hyperdrive seems to get worse every time it's used,' Aaron observes impatiently as he stares out of the front viewport at the bright tunnel of stars surrounding his old, bulky ship. 'Well at least I have time to prepare.'  
But when, at last, the old Imperial freighter comes out of hyperspace, neither Aaron nor his ship is prepared for what greets them.  
Almost before the navicomputer chimes, announcing their arrival at Scariff, Aaron's ship is bombarded with a volley of dust and small rocks. Within seconds, all of the view-ports are completely covered, leaving him functionally blind.  
Fighting back a startled shriek, the gray-haired man pushes a lever forward, activating the deflector shields. Although the bits of rock, metal, and who-knows-what continue to churn outside of his windows, nothing else makes contact with the ship. With some difficulty (he has not needed this control sequence in years), Aaron engages the self-cleaning function, and a quick static charge pushes all of the dust particles away from his view-ports, allowing him about two meters of visibility past the deflector shields.  
Aaron steps away from the control panel, allowing himself a minute to digest what he is seeing. Scariff, all of it... gone. An entire planet, reduced to chunks of drifting rubble.  
"It's... incredible," he murmurs to himself, his voice quavering almost as much as C2M9's had been.  
Ashamed of his fear and despair, Aaron shakes his head hard, forcing himself to focus.  
There's absolutely no way that anything could have survived the explosion, especially not anything as small and delicate as an astromech droid. But if Jabba wants him to look, he'll certainly give it a shot. He can't risk angering his employer, or he'll end up like Han Solo, hopping from planet to planet avoiding Jabba's bounty hunters.  
Slowly and carefully, Aaron Arkadian maneuvers his freighter through the junk heap that was once Scariff.  
His half-hearted search of what used to be the planet's southern hemisphere doesn't uncover any hidden treasures. The most interesting thing that he discovers is on the outer rim of the meteor storm. It appears to be a satellite dish, mangled beyond repair and only recognizable through its vaguely concave shape. Jabba wouldn't be interested in that.  
Resignedly, the smuggler pilots his large vessel around the eastern side of the meteor storm (that's all it is now, Aaron thinks grimly), using his scopes to scan for any signs of mechanical life. But it is his eyes, not the ship's sensors, that eventually land upon his prize. At first, he mistakes it for just another piece of molten metal. But no, he realizes, it is too symmetrical to be a stray piece of building or antenna array.  
Aaron dons a pair of quadnoculars, adjusting the focusing knobs until the peculiar artifact becomes sharp and clear. Dumbfounded, he blinks several times as if to wipe away an optical elusion, but when he peers through his quadnoculars once again, he can still see it—the remains of a KX series Imperial security droid.  
It isn't difficult to tell how it survived the weapon; the unit is encased in a semi-transparent shell of metal and glass. By some miracle of physics, the shrapnel had shielded it from the majority of the blast, but it had certainly sustained damage. Even through the distortion caused by the bow deflector shield, Aaron can see that large parts of its shell are melted almost beyond recognition. Its face is incredibly disfigured, the familiar features twisted into a distorted mess. But Aaron would know a KX droid anywhere. It had been a KX unit that had tossed the grenade casually over its shoulder, obliterating Aaron's entire block.  
Jabba had always wanted one, the smuggler recalls, a slow smile spreading across his face. What better revenge could he devise than to hand this one over to the short-tempered gangster who had brutally tortured droids and humans alike? Heck, he'll even get payed for this!  
'It's time to give the Empire a taste of its own medicine,' Aaron thinks as he extends a thin appendage from underneath the ship, reaching towards the immobilized droid.


	3. Retrieval

Expertly, Aaron makes tiny adjustments to the mechanical extraction arm until it is positioned directly above the droid's motionless, drifting form. With surgical precision, the smuggler manipulates a joystick that lowers the arm's thick, metal claw and closes it around the machine's abdomen.  
None too gently, Aaron pulls the extraction arm back into the ship's underbelly and releases the claw, depositing the KX unit in an unceremonious heap on the floor of the vast cargo hold.  
'If I'm going to sell this droid to Jabba, I should be more careful,' Aaron realizes with some disappointment.  
He should also make a few repairs; in its current condition, the unit might earn him 200 credits tops.  
Sighing heavily, he instructs the navicomputer to send the ship into orbit around one of Scariff's larger moons, then rushes out of the cockpit and down a long, metal corridor to a reinforced steel door—the entrance to the cargo hold. Aaron types a ten-digit combination into a keypad beside the door, and it slides open with a soft whir.  
Pulling a stun gun from a carefully-concealed holster around his waist (the droid seemed too badly damaged to fight, but you can never be too careful, the smuggler reasons), he rushes through the opening.  
As he enters, lighting strips mounted on the ceiling flicker on, casting a dim glow throughout the cavernous space. He had had nothing to worry about; the security droid lies crumpled on the floor, completely dormant.  
Unable to suppress a short, triumphant laugh, Aaron makes his way towards the shell of a droid, his index finger still poised over the trigger of his trusty stun gun. Bending to check the droid's serial number on the back of its head, he discovers that the paint has been completely melted off by the heat of the explosion. Well, it can tell him its ID number once it's functional anyway.  
With immense difficulty, Aaron hauls the tall machine to its feet, dragging it behind him into the storm trooper barracks, which he has converted into a repair center by chucking about a hundred bunk beds into deep space and replacing them with tables, cabinets, shelves of components, and a caf machine for extended work periods.  
Most of the repairs he has done here thus far have been simple, even sometimes cosmetic, jobs—straightening a wire here or polishing a shell there. But this... this is beyond a smuggler's fundamental mechanical knowledge.  
"I'll start with the basics," Aaron murmurs, pulling the KX droid over to an exam table.  
By throwing his full weight onto the dormant machine, he is able to shove it face-first onto the metal surface. As Aaron reaches to turn the droid over, he stops short, gasping in surprise. Between its shoulders is a small, precise hole—a blaster shot! Whatever had caused the Imperials to blow up their own installation had definitely been some sort of conflict with the Rebels.  
Retrieving a pen light and some wire cutters from a nearby toolbox, Aaron peers into the hole at an unbelievable mess of broken wires, displaced microchips, and worst of all, a ruptured battery. He swears under his breath, grabs a small saw from a tall cabinet, and sets to work.  
***  
Four hours, hundreds of curse words, and three jammed fingers later, Aaron has finished his first round of repairs. He will need to do a lot more work later in order to present the droid to Jabba, but he isn't about to go out of his way to make it comfortable until he absolutely has to. For now, all he needs is for the machine to be aware of its surroundings and at least semi-coherent. He has to know what sort of weapon had obliterated Scariff so totally and completely, and what battle had transpired on the planet's surface. But deep down inside, in that dark, twisted place where he keeps his deepest desires, he needs the droid to know just where it is headed. He needs it to feel terrified and helpless, just as his wife and son had felt nine years ago after the grenade had landed on the roof of their dwelling. As much as a cruel, heartless machine can, he needs the KX droid to feel his pain, the constant, excruciating agony that haunts him even as he sleeps. Carefully, Aaron lifts the tall robot from the table and fastens its arms and legs to the wall restraint, four metal cuffs hammered into the ship's bulkhead. when the droid is securely fastened in place, Aaron connects the charger pack via the magnetic strips on the machine's back. About thirty seconds later, the droid's indicator light blinks a few times, brightens, then glows solid green, and its head jerks upright, its arms pushing against its restraints.  
"Cassian?" it calls, a note of hysteria entering its robotic voice. "Cassian, I can't see!"


	4. Denial At Its Finest

Aaron takes a deep breath, fighting the urge to laugh in the druids' half-melted, metal face.  
"Your storm trooper handler can't help you," he says softly, struggling to keep his voice devoid of inflection.  
He knows from experience that KX droids are very good at analyzing speech patterns.  
"My what?" the droid repeats, an edge of laughter entering its voice. "Cassian is hardly a storm trooper, and I can handle myself just fine thank you very much."  
"I don't recall KX droids being this insulant," the smuggler replies, a flicker of irritation crossing his face.  
"And I don't recall humans being this dense," it shoots back. "Now where is Cassian, and why can't I see?"  
"I have some news for you, droid," Aaron snarls, taking a massive stride forward until his nose is almost touching the unit's dented chest plate. "Scariff has been destroyed. Your Cassian is dead, vaporized. And your photo receptors? They're completely melted. You're lucky it wasn't your CPU or hard drive. And so am I, because you belong to me now."  
This stops the droid in its tracks.  
"I - I don't believe you," it stammers, its voice rising in some twisted form of simulated desperation as it pulls against the cuffs holding it to the wall. "You've captured us. I'm in a cell with the lights off, and Cassian and Jyn and Bodhi are next door."  
"Oh yeah?" Aaron retorts, suppressing a twisted laugh. "If the lights are off, why don't you just turn on night vision?"  
"You've disabled it," replies the persistent KX unit. "That's the only logical explanation."  
But even as the peculiar security droid utters these words, Aaron can see its resolve wavering.  
"No," it whispers, straining to turn away from the place where it had last heard Aaron. "It just can't be true."  
Aaron allows himself a satisfied smile as he gazes straight at the two melted lumps of glass and metal that had once been the machine's electronic eyes.  
"But they must have escaped before the Death Star arrived!" it mutters to itself.  
The Death Star! That must be what the Imperials are calling their new weapon.  
"So they've finally programmed grief into you, have they?" Aaron murmurs, curiously observing the seemingly shell-shocked droid. "How impressive."


	5. This Will Be Interesting

Aaron sits cross-legged on the floor of the repair center, watching his prisoner absorb its new circumstances. The blind droid appears to be having an epileptic fit, twitching in its restraints and shaking its head violently every few seconds. After about five minutes of this, the smuggler loses patience.  
"Will you stop that?" he snaps.  
"Stop what?" it replies, sounding distant and crushed.  
Drawing his stun gun, Aaron checks to make sure that the dial is configured to the correct setting, aims, and fires. A small bolt of electricity shoots from the barrel and hits the droid squarely in the chest.  
With a startled electronic shriek, it gives a violent involuntary jerk, spasms a few times, then stands absolutely still. Slowly, almost comically, it tips forward until its restraints pull it back, leaving its arms twisted at odd angles. The droid is conscious, but temporarily immobilized.  
"That's better," Aaron mutters.  
"I disagree," the droid responds.  
"And I don't particularly care. What's your designation?"  
"I'm K-2SO. And I do not like you very much, Aaron Arkadian."  
"Oh, the feeling is mutual," the smuggler tells K-2SO. "If I wasn't absolutely sure I could make a profit off of you, I'd— wait a minute, how did you know my name?"  
"What do you think I've been doing all this time, enjoying the view?" it quips dryly. "I've been exploring your ship's data vaults for the last three minutes. Your name is Aaron Arkadian, and you work as a droid smuggler for Jabba the Hutt."  
Aaron levels his stun gun at K-2SO's head, the dial clicking softly as he sets it to knock the droid unconscious. Better tranquilize it before it discovers any other information he doesn't want it to know.  
"There's no use for that," the droid assures him. "I've already assimilated all of your data."  
"You're not a typical security droid, are you?" Aaron murmurs, speaking more to himself than to his prisoner. "Most of them wouldn't have the brains or balls to try something like this."  
"I am not typical, no," K-2SO assures him. "I also don't have balls."  
"This will be interesting," Aaron mutters.  
"Yes," the droid confirms. "Yes it will."  
He sighs heavily.


	6. Things Get A Lot Worse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, I am so sorry for not updating sooner!!! My term presentation was on Friday, and I basically ran out of energy as soon as I finished with that. And then my wonderful body decided to develop an upper respiratory infection, so I was pretty much out of commission for the entire weekend. But I'm back now, so here's Chapter 6. Warning: it's a little darker than what I've written so far, contains much less sarcasm, and is generally more sad,.

Although he hates to admit it even to himself, there is a small, compassionate place somewhere in Aaron's heart that feels sorry for K-2SO, the sole, blind survivor of Scariff's catastrophic destruction. But a much larger part of him cannot ignore the fact that he was just outsmarted by a droid, a KX unit no less. They're nothing more than security guards.  
He's a droid smuggler; it's his responsibility to be smarter than his prisoners, to think one step ahead of their programming. It's his job to be ready for every infiltration on his data vaults, every escape attempt, every sarcastic comment. But somehow, K-2SO had beat him at his own game, had plundered his secrets and played him for a fool. The droid had even had the audacity to joke about it. For this reason, his anger proves dominant over any feelings of empathy or pity.  
Rising from his seated position on the floor, Aaron turns away from the prisoner, making his way across the repair center.  
"Where are you going?" asks K-2SO, an almost imperceptible hint of fear entering its voice.  
To the blind droid, Aaron realizes with some satisfaction, his slow walk across the room must be torturous; one of the few constants since it had come back online was walking away through what it must perceive as an endless, dark void.  
The man smiles to himself and remains silent as he approaches his mark, a tall cabinet bolted to the opposite wall. Pulling open the bottom drawer, Aaron retrieves a remote control and a small cylinder, measuring about five centimeters across and 15 high.  
Smiling broadly now, Aaron makes his way back to the droid's side.  
"You think you're so smart, don't you?" he murmurs in K-2SO's ear.  
The captive flinches away, startled.  
It should have heard him coming, Aaron knows that. Maybe its auditory sensors were also damaged in the explosion. Regardless, its fear is quite satisfying.  
"Let's see how smart you think you are after this," the smuggler growls through clenched teeth, shoving the cylinder into a port on the machine's chest.  
K-2SO's body spasms as the restraining bolt connects to its system.  
"Delete whatever data you copied from my vault," Aaron commands carefully. "Don't connect to any of my ship's systems. If you're already connected to any external systems or networks, disconnect immediately."  
He can almost see the security droid glowering at him as the restraining bolt forces it to comply.  
"And don't move, not even when the immobilization beam wears off," Aaron adds.  
"Is that really necessary?" K-2SO inquires. "I'm already chained to a wall."  
"Oh, yes it is. And it gets better," says Aaron. "I've made some special modifications to this bolt."  
He holds down a button on his remote, and K-2SO screams in agony as a small static charge ripples throughout his system.  
"That was only a tenth of its full capacity," Aaron announces triumphantly.  
The droid's electronic scream echoes off of the repair center's metal walls, a high-pitched, terrified shriek.  
"Every time you do or say something I don't like," Aaron explains, "I will administer increasingly powerful static charges through this restraining bolt. Oh, and if you try to disable or remove it in any way, it will release a charge that knocks you unconscious until I wake you up. As I've heard, it's quite painful. Do you understand?"  
"Yes," K-2SO replies, the droid's formerly calm voice shaking with anger and fear.  
"Yes what?" Aaron demands.  
"Yes... Master," it amends, an edge of grief entering its voice.  
"That's better," Aaron replies. "I'm leaving this room to make a vid-call. You are not to attempt escape or disturb me in any way. Understood?"  
"Yes, Master," K-2SO responds flatly.  
Without another word, Aaron steps away from his prize and back through the repair center's doorway, taking his remote with him.  
K-2SO listens intently to his captor's footsteps as they recede down the hallway, listens until they can no longer be heard by his slightly damaged auditory sensors.  
"Cassian Andor will always be my master," the droid whispers, so quietly that he isn't even sure whether he has spoken aloud.


	7. Because What Else Would Jabba Be Doing?

Once he is sure that he is out of K-2SO's range of hearing, Aaron allows himself a soft, low chuckle. He has that droid under control now. The defiant KX unit had even called him Master. Heck, it would probably beg and grovel to avoid a second static shock! If only he had invented this bolt before the Imperials had invaded his village nine years ago.  
Triumphant, he practically skips back into the first-class cabin, retrieving his communicator and dialing Jabba's private number. Only a handful of people have access to this chanel. Aaron knows that he is lucky.  
After about twenty seconds, a tiny hologram of C2M9 appears over the communicator's projector lens.  
"Droid," Aaron barks, "I need to speak to Jabba, now!"  
"Sir, my master is unavailable at the moment. He is... incapacitated."  
"Another overdose?" Aaron asks, sighing heavily.  
Jabba's translator nods.  
"He ingested too many opiods," it explains quietly, its remaining eye darting back and forth as though it is afraid to focus on one spot for too long. "B says he'll return to full functionality within two days."  
"Who in the galaxy is B?" Aaron snaps, his cheeks flushing with irritation. "We're not speaking in code last I checked."  
"Oh, I'm sorry. I meant 21B7, my master's medical droid. I call him B."  
C2M9 stares intently at the ground, almost seeming ashamed.  
"Please don't tell our master," it whispers. "He doesn't like droids getting too familiar with each other; he thinks we might stage a rebellion."  
"As if a protocol droid and a medical unit would ever stage a successful rebellion," Aaron scoffs. "Anyway, I've got more important things to worry about than your social restrictions. Tell Jabba to contact me as soon as possible. Tell him that I found something at Scariff's coordinates, a droid he's wanted for a long time."  
For a fraction of a second, C2M9 turns away from the camera, its mechanical shoulders shaking in what can only be described as sadness.  
"I... I'll tell him, sir," says the beat-up protocol droid.  
"What's wrong with you?" Aaron demands as he observes the machine's simulated emotions.  
"Nothing," it replies hurriedly, turning back to face the camera. "Just... a malfunction."  
Aaron shakes his head tiredly.  
He will never quite understand the strange, programmed psychology of a droid.


	8. K Finds A Pretty Significant Loophole

Hours later, as Aaron sleeps soundly in his luxurious cabin, K-2SO lies in a crumpled heap in the corner of one of the freighter's holding cells, struggling to make sense of the day's events. He can't recall any sort of explosion, he knows that much. The last thing he remembers before jolting awake on the smuggler's ship was the sickening feeling of rapidly losing power after a blaster bolt had penetrated his thick armor and ruptured his battery. That leaves him no choice but to believe Aaron's story, to trust that the Death Star had blinded him and obliterated Scariff. He has no way of knowing whether Cassian and the rest of the team had escaped in time; he only hopes that they had survived against the almost impossible odds he has calculated. But no matter what Cassian and Jyn say, hope won't get him far, he knows that. His specialty is strategic analysis; he deals best in facts and figures. With that thought, K2 continues to sort through his memories. The smuggler had fitted him with a restraining bolt, then left to make a call, he recollects sluggishly. A few minutes later, Aaron had burst through the door, unfastened him from the wall, and pushed him roughly through a labyrinth of corridors until they arrived at a tiny, echoey room. K2 had been so terrified of receiving another static shock that he hadn't so much as asked where he had been taken, or even what the room looked like. The man had shoved him in and slammed the door, he remembers. Before he could come up with anything that resembled a plan, Aaron had stormed off, yelling one last order not to move over his shoulder. Unsure of what else to do, the weak and frightened droid had gone into low power mode for a few hours. And now, he lies just where Aaron had let him fall, bored out of his mind and wishing fervently that he could take just one quick look at his surroundings.  
'Cassian would know what to do,' he thinks, frustrated. 'If he was here with me, we would have escaped hours ago.'  
"There's always a way out, K," he remembers his old master assuring him when he got discouraged during a training exercise on Yavin 4. "The question is whether you're clever enough to find it. Now use that supercomputer of a mind and analyze the situation."  
'All I have to do is think like Cassian always told me to,' K-2SO assures himself. 'I have to consider things from a new perspective.'  
Once again, Aaron's volley of orders runs through his mind. He can't move. He can't search through the data vaults. He can't connect to any of the ship's systems. Wait... there's something about that last instruction... The droid's captor had prohibited him from accessing or connecting to the ship, but he hadn't said anything about interfacing with independent systems. Cassian always hated when K-2 exploited those kinds of loopholes, the former Imperial droid recalls distantly. But taking advantage of this one might be his only way out, his only way back to the Rebel base where he belongs. With that thought, K-2SO activates his wireless receiver.  
Everything within range of the droid's slightly damaged sensors seems to be connected to the ship in some way or another. Even the caf machine is linked to a wall panel in the first-class cabin. But wait... there is one tiny system, a blip so small, distant, and remote that his sensors almost miss it. Excitedly, K-2 latches onto the signal, focuses all of his sensors on the tiny, unidentified beacon. Gradually, the flickering signal grows brighter and brighter, until its identity becomes apparent. K-2SO has discovered a portable communicator.  
"It's about time," he almost hears Jyn tease.  
He never thought that he would ever miss that irritating young woman, the same woman who had called him "target practice" and thrown her bag unceremoniously into his arms on their first mission together. But, he reasons, he would welcome almost any form of company at this point. With some difficulty, K-2 brings his mind back to the situation at hand. He has found a communicator, one that he can link to without interference from his restraining bolt. But how should he use this newfound advantage? He can't just contact the Rebel base; Cassian's was the only number that he had been permitted to learn before their separation, and K-2 doubts that the Rebel intelligence officer would risk answering an untraceable call from a vessel somewhere out in deep space, even if he is still alive. He could send out a general distress signal, but that is far too risky; he might as well invite a squadron of Imperial storm troopers over for tea. That leaves him with no viable options. But just as the captive droid resigns himself to another few hours of low-power-mode-induced boredom, the communicator's signal blazes to life with an incoming transmission. In panic, K-2 reconsiders his choices. If the device beeps and wakes Aaron, it won't take the clever smuggler long to discover K-2's electronic intrusion. He could simply decline the call, but what good would that do? Whoever it is will just try again in a few minutes, and he'll be faced with the same dilemma. Before he can change his mind, K-2SO accepts the call, deactivating the communicator's camera and rerouting images and sound to his CPU before the device in Aaron's bedroom can make a single noise. The individual on the other end of the vid-call, the first thing that K2 has seen in a day, is certainly not what he was expecting. He appears to be a protocol droid, but the abuse that he has endured makes him almost unrecognizable; his shell is covered with dents, and one of his eyes is missing, the empty socket covered loosely by a transparent, plastic sheet.  
"What happened to you?" K-2 blurts in his usual, unfiltered manner.  
"I was attacked by one of Jabba's torture droids," the other robot answers almost automatically, as though he has been asked this question many times before. "Do you belong to Mr. Arkadian?"  
"I'm K-2SO, and I am not Aaron's. I was stolen... I think my master might be dead... I need to get back home."  
The other droid turns his head slightly, checking over his shoulder for eavesdroppers. Once he is satisfied that he is alone, he gazes right into the camera, right into K2's field of remote vision.  
"My name is C2M9," he murmurs, speaking in a gentle, calming tone, "and I was stolen, too."  
"Where are you?" K-2 inquires, horrible visions of Jawa sand crawlers and elaborate torture chambers cascading through his mind.  
"I'm in Jabba's palace," says C2M9, "and I think you may be headed there as well."


	9. Finally! Someone To Talk To!

K-2SO freezes, horrified. If half of the things he's heard about the infamous gangster's palace are true...  
"How long has Jabba had you?" the former Imperial droid inquires, struggling to keep his tone as even as possible.  
"Th-Three standard months," C2M9 stammers, shuddering as what K-2 supposes are hundreds of memories of abuse flash through his mind.  
"I'm surprised you survived that long," he says distantly. "The probability is quite low."  
"Me, too," he says, an edge of deep sadness entering his voice. "Droids are disappearing left and right. My counterpart vanished without a trace yesterday while he was repairing our master's sand barge."  
For the second time in the past minute, K-2 is shocked into disbelieving silence. He had seen, and even gotten to know, several astromech/translator teams during his time on Yavin 4. The pairs he can remember were inseparable, one never wandering more than 50 meters from the other's side. When one was sent off on a special assignment or needed maintenance, the other never quite seemed to know what to do with himself, wandering aimlessly up and down the base's corridors or staring off into nothingness. For C2M9, the permanent loss of his counterpart must be devastating, even crippling.  
"I'm sorry," says K-2, slightly ashamed at how gentle and devoid of sarcasm his voice sounds.  
The protocol droid tilts his head to the side as if unsure whether he has heard correctly.  
"Thank you," he responds tentatively.  
"Do they have any idea what happened to him?"  
"He screamed for help a few minutes after his shift began," the other droid responds, seeming to shrink into himself as he relives the unpleasant memory. "I had no idea why, but he seemed to be in a lot of pain, so I ran to find someone. But when I told our supervisor, he pushed me so hard that I fell and said that we were only trying to get out of work. Then he laughed and walked away. By the time I got back to where I left R3, he was gone."  
If it wasn't for the painful, immobilizing effects of his restraining bolt, K-2SO would have shuddered.  
"That's... terrible," he says, wishing not for the first time that he had been programmed with a larger vocabulary. "It's worse than terrible. Even Imperials wouldn't let something like that happen!"  
"My master prides himself on being unique," C2M9 quips dryly, glancing over his shoulder once more. "But enough about me. I called to inform Mr. Arkadian that His Excellency's recovery is proceeding slower than expected. It will take at least three standard days for him to return to full functionality."  
"I can't deliver that message," K-2 explains. "Aaron doesn't know I have access to this communicator. Could you call back in a few minutes so that he never finds out?"  
"I will," the droid responds. "Good luck, K-2SO."  
"C2, wait," he blurts before he can stop himself. "If I'm not at the palace by tomorrow night, could you call again?" he can't seem to stop talking. "It's just that I'm all alone in this tiny room, and I can't move or see or connect to anything, and..."  
C2 laughs softly.  
"And you're bored out of your circuits?" he finishes. "Don't worry. Almost everyone here was transported the same way; you're probably in a holding cell with the lights off. I'm under surveillance a lot of the time, but I'll see what I can do."  
"Thank you," K-2 whispers, hardly daring to believe his luck.  
"Don't mention it," says the silver protocol droid, his remaining photo receptor twinkling kindly. "Oh, and excellent work connecting to Mr. Arkadian's communicator. You're the first who's managed that."  
"I'm very good at finding loopholes," he replies. "My old master always hated me for that."  
Again, C2 laughs quietly, a tentative sort of chuckle that can only come from one who has not had much cause to laugh in a very long time.  
"That skill will come in handy in your near future," he replies. "I just wish I could do more to help you, K-2; I know how frightening this can be."  
"More?" K-2 sputters. "You want to do more? C2, you probably just prevented me from going insane. You've done more than enough already."  
The protocol droid visibly relaxes.  
"Good," he says gently. "Things will be better once you get here, trust me. The work is hard and most organics hate us, but you won't be confined as much and you'll have so many more droids to talk to. Anyway, I'm going to call Mr. Arkadian now; my supervisor is probably wondering what's happened to me."  
"Enjoy that," says K-2. "You'll catch him in an excellent early-morning mood."  
"I'm used to it," his new friend assures him. "But I appreciate the warning."  
As both of them barely suppress loud bursts of laughter, C2 terminates the call, and K2SO disconnects from the communicator's system. About five seconds later, he hears a high-pitched beep, followed by a string of yelled curse words from the general direction of Aaron's cabin, and he can no longer hold back a childish giggle.


	10. K Turns To The Dark Side

For the second time that morning, Aaron jumps out of bed, runs his hands through his hair, and fumbles for his communicator. Jabba wasn't supposed to recover until tomorrow, but who else would have reason to contact him? His question is answered a second later when he accepts the call and a tiny image of C2M9 appears, the droid's head tilted slightly to the side as it stares back at him with its single remaining photo receptor.  
"Oh my. Did I wake you, Mr. Arkadian?" it asks as it takes in the smuggler's glare and unkempt appearance.  
"This had better be important," Aaron growls back through clenched teeth. "If not, I've got a new type of restraining bolt that needs testing..."  
"That won't be necessary, sir," the droid assures him before he can finish his threat. "I'm afraid that I have some bad news for you."  
"And what might that be?" Aaron prompts, fighting the urge to throw the communicator across the room.  
"My master's recovery is proceeding slower than planned," says C2M9. "It will take at least three days for the physiological damage to be entirely reversed."  
"I can't keep this droid in a holding cell forever," Aaron snaps, thoroughly exasperated. "It's dangerous, and frankly, it's getting on my nerves. Do you realize how much time I have to waste babysitting a blind KX unit?"  
Much to Aaron's satisfaction, C2M9 jerks its head upright in what he guesses must be a programmed imitation of surprise.  
"He's blind, sir? If you don't mind me asking, why don't you just repair him? It would be easier for you if he could guide himself, wouldn't it?"  
"Hardly. This is the most troublesome unit I've ever worked with; it tried to search through my ship's data vaults the moment it came online. And I couldn't repair it even if I wanted to. Its photo receptors are melted so badly that I can't so much as take them out."  
"I see. That is... I understand, sir," the protocol droid stammers.  
Aaron chuckles.  
"I suppose your programming didn't plan for that one, did it? Well seeing as Jabba is too busy 'returning to full functionality' to make purchasing arrangements, you'll have plenty of time to get used to it."  
The droid nods thoughtfully.  
"I think I will," it agrees, a slight note of simulated interest entering its voice.  
"I would if I was you," the smuggler shoots back, the corners of his mouth rising in a sadistic smirk as he eyes the thin sheet of transparent plastic covering C2M9's right eye socket. "You're halfway there yourself."  
The moment that these words escape his lips, Aaron knows that he has struck a nerve. C2M9 takes a step away from the camera as though it has been slapped, its hand shooting up to cover its left eye and its shoulders hunching forward as if bracing for impact.  
"Oh, calm down," the smuggler taunts. "It wasn't so bad the first time, was it?"  
"Actually..." the droid begins to correct him.  
"I could not possibly care less," Aaron interrupts. "If you wake me up again, there had better be a message from Jabba himself."  
"Y-Yes, sir," it stammers, trembling slightly and holding both of its hands over its left photo receptor.  
As the droid smuggler terminates the call, K-2 lies in his cell, seething with anger. Aaron will never get away with picking on C2 like that, not if he can help it. The next time that the smuggler even THINKS about hurting the kind, timid droid again...  
'I'm not exactly in a position to be plotting revenge,' K-2 reminds himself, struggling to keep his anger in check.  
For now, his brain is his greatest weapon. Once again, he must think like his old master, Cassian Andor; he had always valued knowledge and cunning above all else. But what knowledge can help K-2 now? For starters, he knows that he only has 10% battery power remaining. As much as he detests it, the wisest course of action now is to reenter low power mode.  
'I will destroy you, Aaron Arkadian,' K-2SO thinks as his systems begin to slow and nonessential processes prepare to shut down. 'I will make you sorry you ever found me.'


	11. Aaron Becomes A Little More Likable

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now, imaginary readers, I bring you an exceedingly long, incredibly strange addition to this exceedingly long, incredibly strange fic. ;) Anyway, this chapter had to be written. It just HAD to. So enjoy!

Minor trigger warning for suicidal thoughts/actions. Be sure to leave a comment if you need to skip this chapter so I can give you a summary; The suicide part is insignificant to the plot and the chapter is kind of important.  
Much to Aaron's relief, he is able to sleep through the rest of the morning with no further interruptions. In fact, when he wakes about three hours after C2M9's call, he feels more content and rested than he has in years. At last, he is seeing success. As soon as Jabba recovers from his overdose, Aaron will make enough credits to quit the smuggling business and disappear into the outer rim, where he can leave the war behind forever. His only problems are K-2SO's damaged eyes. Who would ever want a security droid that couldn't see, even one with above-average intelligence and problem-solving abilities? There is absolutely no way that Aaron Arkadian, a smuggler with just enough mechanical knowledge to perform basic repairs and connect restraining bolts, can even remove the machine's melted photo receptors, let alone fix or replace them. Heck, it was a miracle that he managed to bring the droid back online. He won't be able to sell a blind K-2SO to Jabba unless the machine is capable of functioning without sight. In order to know that for sure, he realizes with a grimace, he'll need to test it. Sighing heavily, Aaron climbs out of bed, grabs his stun gun and remote control, and makes his way to the holding cell where he had left K2SO.  
***  
Standing in front of the cell door, Aaron peers through the thick, durasteel bars at his prisoner. The droid lies just where it had fallen the night before, crumpled and unmoving. Resisting the urge to yell in victory, the smuggler uses a key to unlock the cell door. (The controls used to be electronic, but he had outfitted the cells with mechanical locks after a particularly determined astromech droid had managed to override the mechanism.) Bending to peer at K-2SO, Aaron discovers that its indicator light is off.  
"Wake up," he says curtly, nudging the motionless droid with his boot.  
The captive remains dormant. Of course; it was only connected to the charger pack for a few minutes last night. Feeling foolish, Aaron holds the rectangular device to the droid's back. When he moves his hand away, the pack remains magnetically affixed. After several minutes of tense silence, Aaron tries once more.  
"K-2SO?" he says, gently shaking the droid's shoulder.  
It remains unresponsive, lying in a motionless heap. Aaron's anxiety begins to mount. If his repairs weren't good enough, if the new battery hadn't been properly attached to the internal power cables, the droid could have gone an entire night without power. If that was the case, its hard drive could have been wiped. K-2SO, his ticket to a quiet life in the outer rim, could have been turned into an empty shell, nothing more than a useless pile of scrap metal.  
"No, no, no!" Aaron screams, shaking the droid roughly back and forth. "Answer me!"  
In response, K-2SO gives a soft, electronic moan.  
"I'm such a kriffing lazarbrain!" Aaron hisses between clenched teeth, hauling his prisoner to its feet and dragging it roughly by one arm into the repair center.  
Hurriedly, he shoves the immobile droid onto the exam table, then turns it over so that it lies face-up. He must move quickly; every second he wastes increases K-2SO's chances of permanent deactivation. But as the smuggler turns to search for a screwdriver, he hears a soft chuckle.  
"Now that's more like it," says K-2SO. "I was starting to think I'd be stuck in that position forever."  
Aaron stares, open-mouthed.  
"You mean... You're fine?"  
"Well no, I wouldn't say that. I still can't see, and I would much prefer it if Cassian were here."  
"But your battery... your light... you couldn't even speak!"  
"My battery was extremely low," K-2SO confirms. "I spent the whole night in power-saving mode and turned my indicator lights off so that I would last longer. But I could have spoken if I chose."  
"So you faked a hard drive wipe?" Aaron summarizes. "You did all that, just so I would move you to a more comfortable position."  
"Well it isn't as if I had anything else to do," K-2SO replies bitterly.  
Aaron rounds on his prisoner, brandishing the restraining bolt's static remote.  
"Do you have any idea how much worse I could make it for you?" he demands.  
"But what more can you do to me?" K-2SO shoots back, its voice rising in despair. "You've already taken me from Cassian and paralyzed me, and now you're going to torture me. My situation isn't about to improve, so what more do I have to lose?"  
This statement gives Aaron significant pause. He knows that these words are only products of the droid's artificial intelligence algorithms, the translation of a string of zeroes and ones. But somehow, K-2SO's words ring true. There is something in the droid's voice, a sort of raw, uncensored depression, that makes him believe it. After all, Aaron knows depression better than anything, besides maybe anger.  
"I didn't take you from Cassian, you know," he replies, speaking more gently than he had intended. "The explosion did that."  
"That's what I'm supposed to believe," the droid replies darkly. "I have no memories of this explosion."  
"Well what do you want, a picture of his body?"  
Despite himself, Aaron feels a slight pang of guilt as he gazes at what remains of K-2SO's electric eyes.  
"I... I just wish I had been there. I could have saved him, I know it."  
These words come as quite a shock to Aaron; none of the KX droids he had previously encountered had been capable of such profound emotion.  
"You really cared about him, didn't you? As more than just a master."  
"Well of course I did," K-2SO replies as though it is the most obvious statement in the galaxy. "He rescued me from the Empire."  
Aaron shakes his head wearily. The droid must have a damaged CPU, too. This is going to be a hard sell.  
"You're an Imperial security droid, K-2SO," he says, speaking in the slow, careful tone that he had heard protocol droids use with their short-circuiting counterparts.  
"I USED to be an Imperial security droid, Aaron Arkadian," it corrects, speaking in an equally condescending manner. "Now I'm not."  
Aaron sighs, a bit of his sympathy evaporating in favor of exasperation.  
"What happened?" he asks before he can stop himself. "What made you change?"  
"Cassian," it responds. "He found me on his first solo mission three standard years ago."  
"Three years?" Aaron repeats, incredulous. "He put up with you for three years?"  
"He valued my skills, unlike some people who would apparently prefer to keep me paralyzed and locked in a cell," the droid retorts bitterly. "Anyway, he reprogrammed me, I became loyal to the Rebel Alliance, and the rest is classified."  
"You consider that a rescue?" he asks, dumbfounded. "I call it a hijack."  
"Clearly, you have never been an Imperial droid."  
"With all of the money at the Empire's disposal, I would think they could afford to take care of you."  
"Oh, I was treated well enough," it assures him. "I was given a constant power supply, access to maintenance, all of that. More than you've given me. The real problem was my censor."  
"You mean the program that keeps you from saying every last thing that pops into your head? That doesn't sound like much of a problem to me," Aaron interrupts. "In fact, if I had one, I'd be installing it on your hard drive right about now."  
"How would you like it if you could only say 'yes, sir' or 'no, sir' or 'Our odds of success are 73.6%, sir'? I had so many thoughts, so much I wanted to say, but it was all suppressed. Some days, I thought my CPU would explode from all of it. I wished I was dead most of the time. Once, I even tried to short out my own CPU with a magnet. I would have succeeded, too, if that R2 unit hadn't stopped me. But the Imperials didn't care about any of it; they only wanted a soldier, a calculator, an obedient slave."  
Aaron sinks into a chair beside the exam table, feeling suddenly dizzy. It had never occurred to him that droids could think things they didn't say, could have personalities buried underneath those cold, metal exteriors. A wave of deep sympathy washes over the smuggler, and he finds himself speaking even more gently.  
"But isn't that what the Rebels wanted, too?"  
"Some of them," the droid admits. "A few ordered Cassian to replace the censor, but he always told them that it couldn't be done, that it was an unfortunate byproduct of my reprogramming. He admired my individuality; he told me that we would need it to defeat the Empire. He... he once said that I was the only true Rebel in the base. He was uncertain whether it was a compliment at the time."  
In spite of himself, Aaron feels a smile spreading across his face. This story explains so many of K-2SO's peculiarities, but it also reveals something else, something much more important. At least he thinks it does.  
"Did all of the security droids have censors?"  
"Every last one," his prisoner confirms.  
"And were they all forced to obey orders?"  
"Without question, unless we found that the odds of success dipped below 10%. Then we could alert an officer."  
Just as it has done many times before, Aaron's mind brings him back to his family's last moments. His young son had been terrified, cowering in the back of their dwelling. His wife was trying her best to comfort the boy as she coaxed him closer and closer to the doorway, closer and closer to safety. Aaron, meanwhile, had been stationed on a rooftop across the street, acting as a lookout for all of the village's evacuees. That's when the KX unit had come, its enormous frame towering above the tiny structure. The grenade had flown from its outstretched hand in a perfect arc, landing right in the center of his family's primitive hut. They had been frozen, both mother and child staring in horrified awe at the grenade even as it exploded. Aaron had sent a volley of blaster bolts flying towards the droid, shot at it again and again until it was nothing more than a pile of melted parts. All of these years, he had blamed that KX unit for his misery. He had learned to hate droids, learned to capture, torture, and sell them. But could he have been wrong? Could his family's killer have been just like K-2SO, a slave whose thoughts and opinions were trapped inside of its own head? Could it have been just like him, thrust into the middle of a war it couldn't care less about?  
"Come on," Aaron murmurs to K-2. "Follow me. Let's get you cleaned up."  
"Finally!" he says, an unmistakable note of happiness coloring his voice as he bounds off of the exam table.  
After taking only a few, tentative steps towards Aaron's chair, he trips over a stray toolbox and falls to the floor with a deafening crash and a mechanical shriek.  
"Or I could just guide you for now," says Aaron, holding back a laugh.  
"That is a much safer idea," K-2 replies shakily, getting to his feet and waiting patiently for Aaron to stand up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well if you've made it this far, that chapter wasn't quite as messed up as I predicted. :D Please don't be afraid to leave a comment and let me know what you think. If you're enjoying the fic, what do you like about it? If you're not, why have you made it to chapter 11?! ;) But seriously, I would really appreciate some feedback, even negative feedback. It will help this story improve. I'll try to update ASAP!!!


	12. I Am Terrible At Chapter Titles

More than three million kilometers away, on the lonely desert planet of Tatoene, C2M9 stands in his cell-like containment cube, peering anxiously through its clear front at the gigantic, hulking form of one of Jabba's many henchmen. A few are assigned to guard the droids every night; it is the most coveted job in the palace, as it is an unspoken rule that the thugs can get away with testing any new form of torture that doesn't prevent a droid from performing its duties the next morning. C2, with his missing eye and timid nature, is almost always one of the first targets. Subconsciously, the droid finds himself glancing at the empty space to his right, the vacant charging stand where R3 should be. He and his counterpart had spent countless hours trapped in this bare, transparasteel cube, sharing murmured stories and jokes on good nights and huddling together in silent terror on bad ones. They had always been close, but the day that Jabba had commanded his torture droid (one of the very few who was not stolen and doesn't have to stay in a containment cube at night) to remove C2's right eye, R3 had appointed himself the protocol droid's lookout, never wandering more than a meter away from his side unless he was literally forced to. The cheerful little astromech had rescued C2 from countless dangers, perils he never would have spotted even if he had a hundred photo receptors. He wonders where R3 is now, and if he is in any pain. He hopes that his friend isn't stuck in another cube, that, wherever he is, he is free from abuse and fear.  
As the guard makes his way down the aisles of containment cubes, lumbering ever closer to C2M9, the droid turns slightly to the right, angling himself so that the sheet of plastic where his right eye should be cannot be seen from the front. He has had quite a bit of practice finding this position. Barely able to see the guard anymore (C2's peripheral vision had always been abysmal, even before Jabba's interference), the protocol droid jumps when he hears a sharp tap on the front of his cube. Trying his best not to shudder, C2 stares intently at a point just to the left of the guard's face, concentrating with all of his might on appearing just like any other droid, just another undamaged, obedient prisoner.  
'Leave me alone,' he thinks, terror coursing through his circuits. 'Please let me be, just this once.'  
But his silent pleas are answered by a soft, cruel laugh, and the sound of a key sliding into the lock of his cube. Before he can so much as scream, two strong arms have dragged him roughly from the relative safety of the tiny enclosure and tossed him to the tile floor.  
Faintly, he hears a soft, sympathetic whistle from an astromech somewhere to his right, followed by a murmured "Shhh, he'll be all right," from another droid, presumably the astromech's counterpart. Panicked and dizzy, C2 gazes up into the face of his attacker, a brutishly muscular, square-jawed man with a wicked glint in his eyes.  
'Please be done,' he thinks in terror, shuddering from head to toe as the guard smirks at him. 'Put me back in my cube and be done with me.'  
"Where's your little seeing eye dog?" he asks, gazing curiously at R3's empty charging stand.  
"He... he's gone, sir," C2 replies, his already timid voice shaking from grief and anxiety.  
The guard laughs shortly.  
"Taken by the sand people you mean," he says. "Don't worry, he'll be back soon. Well, a few parts of him anyway. Jabba buys scraps from them all the time. Maybe, if you're good, you'll get his eye."  
C2 freezes in horror. Before the guard can continue his torment, the door of the droids' quarters bursts open, and a familiar voice is yelling his name.  
"C2M9! Where is C2M9? I require his immediate assistance."  
"I'm over here," he calls back, struggling to keep the relief out of his tone.  
With his imposing height and skeletal appearance, 21B7 can be quite intimidating when he needs to. As he hurries into C2's row, the guard takes several steps backward, almost tripping over his own feet to dodge the sprinting medical droid.  
"What makes you think you can just stroll on in and take any prisoner you want?" he snarls.  
"Pardon me, sir," B replies with barely-contained sarcasm, "but I am Jabba's medical droid. Since my master is critically injured, I do believe I have permission to take whoever and whatever I need in order to ensure his well-being."  
The guard's face turns bright red with anger, and he storms away through the maze of containment cubes and charging cables.  
"Can you stand?" B asks gently, eyeing C2's prone form.  
"Y-Yes," he stammers, still shaken.  
B holds his hand out to the terrified droid, who clings to it greatfully, pulling himself into a standing position.  
"Follow me now," he commands, gently but firmly. "We haven't much time."  
As quickly as his stiff legs and restraining bolt will allow, C2 hurries after 21B7 through a labyrinth of narrow, dim corridors, up several flights of stairs, and finally, through a tiny, unmarked door and into a supply closet.  
"You didn't really need my help, did you?" asks the translator droid.  
"Not in the strictest definition," B confirms. "Master is stable for now; I managed to stabilize him by putting him into stasis. But I heard that guard making fun of you, and... after what happened to R3, to you both... Well, I couldn't let him hurt you even more."  
"Thank you," C2 responds, overwhelmed by gratitude. "No one's ever done that for me before."  
"I just don't understand them," says B, frustration and anger causing him to pace around the tiny closet. "I simply cannot comprehend how making us feel pain is benefitting them."  
"Your guess is as good as mine," says C2M9, shaking his head wearily. "Perhaps it has something to do with organic biology."  
The medical droid begins to spin in quick, almost fevered circles, his electric eyes focused on the ceiling.  
"If only I could have just one minute of Holonet time," he mutters, deep longing coloring his voice. "Then I could tell you EXACTLY why!"  
C2 places a gentle hand on B's shoulder, stopping his alarmingly fast spinning. Before he was stolen by one of Jabba's many smugglers, 21B7 had had an exceptionally kind master who had granted him full Holonet access. Due to his high intellect and constant desire to learn, his friend now suffers from chronic understimulation and is prone to sudden bouts of uncontrollable movement, or even wandering up and down corridors, when bored. In a fit of untempered frustration, he had once compared the total lack of input to being suddenly deafened.  
"It's all right," C2 assures him, "I don't have to know now."  
Although the medical droid is no longer spinning, he still bounces lightly on the balls of his feet, his CPU craving any and all possible forms of environmental interaction. Naturally, this constant motion enfuriates the guards, who frequently punish B by locking him in his containment cube for the day. Despite the other droids' best efforts to explain that, if he wasn't shut in a containment cube for the majority of the day, he wouldn't feel the need to move so much in the first place, he has spent weeks on end alone in his transparasteel prison, rocking back and forth and staring at the far wall. This time, Jabba's overdose was the only reason why he was let out at all.  
"Anyway, what did I miss?" B inquires hollowly.  
C2M9 gazes into his friend's troubled eyes, searching for something, anything, that could make up for the abuse and misunderstanding he has endured. At last, he finds it.   
"Well there's a new droid coming in a few days," he says cheerfully.  
Within a second, 21B7's expression brightens and his head jerks upright.  
"How do you know?" the medical droid inquires, leaning forward with hyper-alert interest.  
"He managed to hijack a nearby communicator," C2 explains. "When I called Aaron Arkadian to inform him of Jabba's condition, he picked up instead."  
"What kind is he?" asks B. "You'd have to be at least a slicer to pull something like that."  
"He's a KX unit."  
With these words, 21B7 takes an involuntary step backward, seized by fear.  
"As in an Imperial security machine?"  
"Yes, but he isn't like that at all," says the beat-up protocol droid. "There's something different about him, something not Imperial at all."  
Without warning, C2M9 collapses against the closet wall.  
"He's alone and scared and blind. Between Master and the guards, he isn't going to last a day. They'll tear him apart, B!"  
Carefully, the medical droid lowers C2 to the closet floor, helping him sit with his back against the wall.  
"Whether he's Imperial or not, this KX unit seems like the smartest droid we've had in a while," he says soothingly. "He may be blind, but he's gotten this far on his own. Besides, we'll all do what we can for him, just like we always do."  
"But what if that's not enough? You've seen those guards—the second they discover a weakness, even a small one..."  
"Well I guess we'll just have to make sure he doesn't have any weaknesses, won't we?" B interrupts, a cunning edge entering his voice.  
"What have I started?" C2 murmurs to himself.  
"Nothing good!" His friend responds happily, bouncing towards the closet door. “Come on."


	13. So Many Blind Jokes

Aaron Arkadian has always considered himself something of a jack of all trades. He can pilot starships, perform basic mechanical repairs, and even eat expired MREs without batting an eye. But guiding a sightless droid is definitely not part of his skill set. It can't be that much different from leading a blind-folded prisoner, the smuggler tells himself, rising from his chair and grasping his tall companion's shoulders from behind.  
"Do you have any idea how this works?" asks K-2SO.  
"Not a clue."  
"How reassuring."  
"Oh shut up," Aaron shoots back through clenched teeth, shoving the droid roughly towards the other side of the enormous repair center. "Go this way."  
To Aaron's surprise, he can feel K-2 shaking slightly under his touch.  
'This must be even more terrifying for him than it is for me,' he realizes.  
After all, the droid doesn't exactly have much cause to trust him after all that's happened between them.  
"Are you certain that you are properly equipped for this job?" K-2 inquires nervously after stumbling over a stray electrical wire. "You do not seem to possess the necessary hand-eye coordination."  
"I am in fact most uncertain," Aaron replies, "but I've definitely got more hand-eye coordination than you right now. Besides, I'm all you've got."  
They continue for another ten meters or so, with Aaron's corrections becoming less like rough shoves and more like gentle pushes. At last, they come to a stop beside a tall, narrow vat half-filled with light yellow motor oil.  
"Stay right there," Aaron commands, releasing his hold on K-2SO and prying off the vat's lid.  
The former security droid leans forward, extending his neck so that his olfactory sensor is positioned directly above the vat.  
"Is that... lubricant?" he inquires, his voice cracking with surprise. "Are you going to give me an oil bath?"  
"As if I would ever waste over 20 liters of oil just to watch you go through five minutes of simulated pleasure," Aaron scoffs, retrieving a large brush from a nearby drawer. "This is just a little maintenance to get rid of the worst of the ash contamination. I can't sell you if you walk like a damaged protocol droid with 5% battery power."  
"So it all revolves around credits," the droid murmurs to himself. "Why am I not surprised?"  
Ignoring K-2SO's remark, Aaron dips the brush into the vat of lubricant, then carefully drags its soft, rubbery bristles over the unit's left knee joint. Within five seconds after the first stroke, a river of oil begins to drip down K-2's leg, particles of ash, dust, and who-knows-what turning it gritty and black. In spite of himself, Aaron swears under his breath. No wonder the droid is so clumsy; with this level of contamination, the smuggler is amazed that his prisoner was able to make it across the room without falling.  
"How bad is it?" K-2 wants to know.  
"Let's just say that we might need to get a little creative," Aaron responds tersely, bending to examine the joint.  
"Does this creativity, by any chance, involve an oil bath?"  
"Nice try," says Aaron, lightly swatting the droid's arm.  
He hates to admit it, but there is a part of him that admires his prisoner's determination.  
"Even if I DID feel like rewarding you for all of the inconvenience and irritation you've caused me," he continues as he applies more lubricant to the joint, "an oil bath can't solve this one; it would be like putting a bandage on a blaster wound. There's so much junk built up inside of you that the only way to remove it is to take you apart and clean all of the dirty components individually."  
"A full dissection and reassembly? Based on your approximate level of mechanical proficiency, the chances of you performing that kind of procedure incorrectly are 98.3%," K-2 blurts, twitching from anxiety.  
"Relax," says Aaron, struggling to conceal a laugh. "I wouldn't trust myself to handle that kind of operation either. One of Jabba's astromechs will take care of it as soon as you arrive, even if it's not ordered to. They're a peculiar bunch, Jabba's droids."  
"So your immediate solution is to leave me injured and hope that an overachieving astromech will help me? You're too kind."  
"Oh, stop complaining, you'll be fully functional within a week. I've seen it happen too many times to count. Anyway, the only thing I can do is loosen your joints a bit. That should make you look less... intoxicated."  
"What in the galaxy do I look like when I walk?" K-2 demands, a note of laughter entering his voice.  
"Like you just stepped out of a Corellian bar on New Years Eve," Aaron replies, a thin smile lighting his face.  
"I fail to see a problem with that situation," K-2SO replies, puzzled. "I cannot consume alcohol, and I am well-equipped to defend myself in case of a fight."  
"You're blind, K-2SO," the smuggler replies without thinking. "You're not even equipped to defend yourself in case of a fight with a six-year-old."  
For a fraction of a second, the Rebel droid almost seems to wilt, his head dipping and his shoulders rising to form a sort of protective shell. But before Aaron can think of something, anything, that will make up for what he has just said, K-2SO lifts his head and turns straight towards his captor.  
"Fair point," he concedes. "But you're assuming quite a lot there. What species is the six-year-old? What is its approximate level of intelligence? Does it have the element of surprise? Is it carrying any weapons?"  
"I give up," says the smuggler, throwing his hands up in a gesture of surrender and fighting to keep the relief out of his voice. “Just trust me. You look... interesting."


	14. Unforeseen Circumstances

A little over three hours later, after K-2SO has been sealed back in his holding cell for safe-keeping, Aaron stands beside a sink filled with soapy water, engaged in a futile attempt to wash up. Who knew there could be so much contamination in just a few mechanical leg joints? Glancing down at his hands and arms, which are still streaked with black splotches of dirt, ash, grease, and motor oil, the smuggler heaves a sigh and pulls the plug, allowing the dirty water to gurgle sluggishly down the drain and back into the freighter's ancient filtration system. There's no hope of removing these stains until he gets access to stronger soap. Well at least the merchandise looks a bit more presentable. It hadn't been easy, but Aaron had managed to remove enough dirt from K2's joints that the droid has lost his clumsy, stiff gait in favor of an equally clumsy, stumbling one. He had even managed to paint over a few of the warped patches on K2SO's metal shell, making him appear slightly less damaged than he truly is. Aaron's modifications are not perfect by any means (there is no hiding K-2's slightly melted face, ruined photo receptors, or constant sarcasm), but they will definitely be enough to convince Jabba that the security droid is still in working order. However, from what he has heard from C2M9, the gangster won't be in any shape to negotiate prices, even through a communicator, for at least a few days. So what should he do next? He might as well start with lunch, he decides, heading down the hall and into the cramped officers' kitchen. He had been so preoccupied with K-2 that he had neglected to eat breakfast, and he can no longer deny the dull, persistent pain of hunger. Unlike most of the ship's rooms, the kitchen is relatively clean, the countertops and cabinets nearly devoid of dust. Unfortunately, they are also nearly devoid of food, Aaron realizes grimly, pulling open a small cabinet above the sink where he has stashed the last of his emergency MREs. Only one foil packet remains, so aged that the formerly crisp, black letters printed on the label have been reduced to a cluster of inky smudges rather similar to the stains on his hands.  
'Well it's this or nothing,' he tells himself with a resigned grimace, reaching to the back of the cabinet to retrieve his long-expired meal.  
He rips open the packet with his teeth and peers at the petrified remains of what once must have been a perfectly good MRE. Aaron doubts that he would be able to pry the dehydrated food from the package if he used industrial-strength pliers and a blow torch. He knows from personal experience that it's never a good idea to eat something this hard; even after he adds water, the mixture will possess both the texture and appeal of a cluster of wet pebbles.  
He's completely out of food, and his supply of fuel isn't much higher. As much as he hates landing for any reason (squadrons of Imperial storm troopers are positioned at almost every spaceport in the galaxy these days), he needs to obtain more provisions soon or he'll find himself drifting aimlessly through deep space with only K-2SO for company until he starves to death. Shuddering at this bleak prospect, the smuggler makes his way to the cockpit and opens a long-range com channel. If he must land, he knows just where he'll go. It's about time he contacted an old friend.

***  
"I still don't understand why I have to come with you," says K-2SO, stepping quickly out of Aaron's reach and retreating deeper into his cell.  
"You know exactly why," the smuggler replies, brandishing a pair of wrist binders and stepping forward until his captive is pinned against the wall. "You are exceptionally difficult, and I can't have you running off on me the moment I leave the ship."  
"Who ever said I would do that?"  
"Oh, give me a break; you would and you know it. Now hold still!"  
"I'm blind," K-2 shoots back as his restraining bolt freezes him in place and Aaron snaps one metal cuff onto the droid's left wrist. "Even if I DID run off, I wouldn't get very far. My chances of locating an adequate hiding place before being spotted and returned to you are infinitesimal; I would never risk it."  
Ignoring the robot's annoyingly logical argument, Aaron fastens the other cuff to his prisoner's right wrist, then secures a short, iron chain to the metal bar that connects the manacles. The smuggler now holds K-2 on a makeshift leash. He gives the chain a rough, experimental tug, testing its strength. K-2, completely unprepared and immobilized by the restraining bolt, teeters, shrieks, then topples over, pulled by the force of the yank. Aaron barely manages to jump out of his prisoner's way before he hits the cell floor with a deafening crash of metal on metal.  
"Was that really necessary?" asks K-2SO, lying stiffly on his back with his arms twisted at odd angles.  
"Yes. Now get up and follow me. Don't do anything else unless I tell you otherwise. Do you understand?"  
Rising unsteadily to his feet, K-2 remains silent.  
"You can speak," says Aaron, heaving yet another sigh.  
He'll need to be more careful when giving future orders.  
"Yes, Master," the blind prisoner responds instantly, his voice dripping sarcasm. "I understand."  
"Good enough," says the gray-haired man, giving the chain another sharp tug which almost causes the captive to fall to his knees. "Come along then. And don't say a word to anyone besides me!"  
"Where are we going?" the droid inquires as he stumbles after Aaron, half dragged by the leash.  
"We're visiting a friend of mine, another droid smuggler."  
"So now there'll be two of you," K-2 mutters, his chain rattling sharply as he gives an involuntary shudder. "How delightful!"


	15. Cause And Effect

As Aaron emerges from his ship for the first time in over two months, leading a stumbling, confused K-2, he is nearly blinded by the intense whiteness of fully functional lighting strips. He has become so accustomed to the soft, inconsistent glow that comes from the ancient bulbs in his ship that the sight momentarily freezes him in his tracks.  
"I have got to get myself a newer ship," he murmurs.  
"Darn right you do," says a lightly accented female voice. "What do you think this is, an antique shop?"  
Aaron whirls, accidentally tugging so hard on K-2's leash that the unfortunate droid gives a soft grunt of pain, his servos whining with the effort of keeping him upright. Blinking furiously to dislodge the spots that the bright light had made in his field of vision, Aaron squints around for the source of the voice... and right into the face of his friend and coworker, Abi Kean. To the casual observer, the young woman would probably appear ordinary; with her slight build, elvish features, and carefully styled auburn hair, most wouldn't expect her to be much more than a well-mannered, delicate housewife. However, Aaron knows all too well that she is anything but. Her thin frame is well-muscled, her gaze razor sharp, her every move and word carefully measured and calculated. She is a legend among smugglers of all types, an incredible asset to any employer, and most of all, a complete pain in the neck when she wants to be.  
"Why hello to you, too," he says dryly. "I'm fine, thanks for asking."  
"Yeah yeah," she replies, smirking. "I hope your flight was nice, my how you've grown, all of that. Now hurry up and follow me. That pet droid of yours is going to attract a lot of attention."  
K-2 stiffens with indignation, but since he is prohibited from speaking to Abi, he can only glare in her general direction. With no further arguments, Aaron dashes (or walks as fast as he can with K-2SO stumbling along behind him), after his friend, through her private hangar and towards a land speeder. Although the large, navy blue speeder seems like any other family vehicle, it is full of secret compartments, hidden tools, and special modifications. It's a smuggler's ideal business vehicle. Hurriedly, Abi climbs into the driver's seat.  
"How are we going to get him on board?" Aaron calls up to his friend, gesturing vaguely towards K-2. "I can't risk letting him go for more than a few seconds."  
Abi gives a short, condescending laugh.  
"Picked up a difficult one, have we? Just push it underneath that little red box there and let go of the leash."  
Aaron winces slightly. He has no idea what this box does, but the glint in Abi's eyes tells him that whatever it is will be excruciating.  
"Sorry," he whispers, gently prodding K-2SO forward until the droid's head is positioned directly underneath the strange box mounted on the side of Abi's speeder, then letting the chain drop from his grip. "It'll be over soon."  
K-2 tilts his chin up bravely, his melted face turned towards Aaron in what he swears is a defiant scowl.  
"Be careful with that droid, Abi," Aaron cautions. "He... er... it... could be worth a fortune."  
"Oh, relax," she says, tapping at her console. "Leave it to me."  
The red light in the middle of the box turns green, and K-2SO's body freezes, then begins to levitate towards the open cargo compartment. The former Imperial security droid convulses, emitting a strange, mechanical whimper.  
"What IS that thing?" Aaron demands, resisting the urge to yank K-2 out of the air and away from the box.  
"Just an electromagnet," she answers with a thin smile, gently lowering K-2 onto the floor of the cargo hold. "It's not strong enough to do any serious damage."  
Suddenly, her eyes light up, and her smile widens.  
"But it can have some rather interesting effects," she tells Aaron, tapping at her console once more. "Watch this."  
As the magnet's pull reactivates with increased strength, K-2's soft moan becomes a frantic shriek, and his limbs thrash wildly as though he is combatting hundreds of invisible enemies. Aaron has inflicted pain on countless robots of all shapes and sizes, he knows that. This reaction isn't anything he hasn't seen dozens of times before. But for some inexplicable reason, K-2's tortured cry strikes him someplace deep and primal. Before he realizes what he has done, he has already bounded through the speeder's passenger door and seized Abi's wrist, jerking her hand away from the control panel.  
"Stop!" he hears himself cry. "You're hurting him!"  
Abi's hand twitches slightly, and the next thing Aaron knows, he is holding nothing but empty air. After a second of perplexed staring, the female smuggler adjusts a dial on her console, and K-2SO's wild thrashing lessens, then ceases altogether. After a few seconds of mild twitching, the terrified and confused droid lies completely still, the indicator lights on his head and chest flashing erratically.  
"Aaron, you do realize that there's no way I can really hurt a droid, don't you?" she asks, barely holding back a laugh. "I can damage one, sure, but hurt? What you're seeing is nothing more than a simulated pain response. It's cause and effect to them, choreography even. If a stimulant has a high probability of causing damage," she gestures to K-2's inert form.  
"They do that," they say in unison.  
Aaron blinks hard, almost as though he is awakening from a very strange dream.  
"Of course," he says slowly. "You're right; I don't know what I was thinking."  
Abi nods, a relieved smile crinkling the corners of her intelligent, green eyes.  
"You've been cooped up on that ancient relic you call a starship for too long, that's all. Now hold on; there aren't any speed limits on this planet, and I intend to take full advantage."  
With that, the vehicle's repulser lifts activate, and they rise about a meter off of the hangar floor, then zoom through its cavernous doors and into the bright, afternoon light of Alderaan.


	16. Humans Are Clueless

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First things first, I'd like to apologize for the lateness of this update. I'm starting to believe that my class is involved in a social experiment to see how much homework we can complete before we crack. Anyway, this update may be late, but it is officially my longest chapter!!! I'll let you decide whether that's a good thing. Also, thanks so much to the user who bookmarked this work!!!!! I won't mention your name here so as not to put you on the spot, but you literally made my day.

As Abi's speeder hurtles through the air, shooting past buildings so quickly that Aaron doesn't have time to so much as glance at their addresses, he can't help but steal a few quick looks back at K-2SO. The captive lies on his back on the cargo hold's unforgiving, metal floor, rigid as an iron crowbar. Every time the speeder banks to either side, he slides across the floor until he strikes a wall with a loud clang and a soft moan of pain.  
"What are you doing?" Aaron demands after a particularly sharp turn which causes K-2's face to smash into the wall directly behind his seat. "You're going to damage yourself."  
"Well I'm not moving, that's for sure," the droid replies, his usually sarcastic tone infused with pain and humiliation.  
Perplexed, Aaron gazes at the tall droid, who remains stiff as a board and slides head-first into a corner.  
Suddenly, he realizes why K-2SO isn't doing anything to protect himself.  
"You can move and speak to Abi if you'd like," Aaron says gently. "Just don't try to escape or hurt either of us."  
In an instant, the restraining bolt loosens its grip, and K-2's body relaxes.  
Slowly, the damaged droid sits up and slides across the floor until his back is pressed into the far corner. Seeming exhausted, he remains huddled there, quivering.  
That electromagnet must have affected him a lot more than he let on.  
A few seconds later, K-2 turns towards Aaron, and to the smuggler's utter astonishment, gives a tiny, almost imperceptible nod of thanks.  
Just a day ago, Aaron would have found K-2SO's confusion and pain amusing, would have done anything he could to make it worse. He never would have guessed that, in 24 short hours, he would be working to alleviate his agony.  
"I won't let it happen again," he murmurs in reply.  
He'll need to be much more careful when giving future generalized orders. If K-2 had fallen from the back of the speeder, the poor droid would have been crushed in an instant, completely unable to move out of the way of oncoming traffic.  
Oblivious, Abi maneuvers the speeder around a corner and into a dim alleyway, then through a garage door. There, she deactivates the repulser lift, and they touch down on a landing pad with a soft bump. Still nautious from their wild ride, Aaron remains in his seat, his head between his knees and his hands over his eyes.  
"Your heart rate is considerably elevated," K2 observes with concern, rising to his knees and making his way slowly towards Aaron. "It is 50 BPM above average."  
"Yeah, no kidding," the man responds through gritted teeth, fighting the urge to vomit.  
Turning to berate Abi for her terrible driving, Aaron is startled to find that she has already bounded out of the speeder and opened a small, sliding door in the garage's front wall.  
"Well, come on," she calls. "Bring the droid with you; I can keep an eye on it while you eat."  
Resignedly, Aaron steps out of the speeder and opens the thick, metal doors of the cargo hold, his head still spinning.  
"I do not like her," K-2 mutters to himself, jumping down from the hold and landing gracefully on the balls of his feet.  
"You'll like her even less if she hears you say that," Aaron replies.  
"She cares about my opinion?" asks K-2, his head tilted to the side in puzzlement. "She has a funny way of showing it."  
"Heck no!" Aaron assures the droid, chuckling. "But she DOES care when machines have independent thoughts."  
K-2 nods in understanding, and Aaron half-guides, half-pushes the blind droid through the door after Abi, allowing the chain leash to trail behind them with an annoying, scraping sound. They enter a brightly-lit, low-ceilinged apartment. It is quite simply furnished, containing only a couch, a small table surrounded by three chairs, a kitchinette, and a neatly-made bed.  
"This is where you live?" Aaron inquires, his voice cracking with surprise. "I would have thought... with your skills..."  
"That I should be able to afford a better place," she finishes with a knowing smile. "And you're right; I could probably afford any building on this rock, except the royal palace. The Organas would never sell their precious property to the likes of me."  
She rolls her eyes, looking for all the world like a bored teenager.  
"But I don't want to draw attention to my wealth," she continues. "Imperials tend to keep an extra careful eye on the rich, and I can't have that in my line of work, now can I? I'd be sent to a labor camp before I could so much as sneeze."  
With her usual, reckless speed, Abi dashes across the apartment to a small, beat-up stove and retrieves a bowl of something hot and delicious-smelling from one of the burners. In an instant, she has set it down at the table, placed a spoon in it, and stepped back, exaggeratedly gesturing for Aaron to take a seat. Aaron, not requiring any further prompting, practically collapses into the chair and begins to shovel food into his mouth. Only after the first few bites does he register that he is eating stew. As Aaron continues to devour his meal, Abi gives a soft snort of laughter.  
"This definitely beats whatever expired MREs you've been eating, right?"  
Aaron nods vigorously, an enormous, goofy smile plastered across his face.  
"You missed your calling," he says once he has finished. "You're a chef, not a smuggler."  
For the second time in the last five minutes, Abi rolls her eyes.  
"That gourmet masterpiece came straight from a can, Aaron," she says. "You could make it, too, if you ever settle down."  
"That's not going to happen," he says. "Not with Jabba as an employer."  
"Oh, that reminds me," she says, her face coming alive with excitement, "I have some things to show you. I put them in this building as soon as I got your call."  
Comfortably full now, Aaron rises from his chair and moves to stand behind his friend as she slides open a door beside the bed, revealing a closet filled with various outfits.  
"What, did you buy a new dress you want me to see?" he teases.  
"You know me better than that," she replies simply.  
Out of the corner of his eye, Aaron notices that K-2's head is tilted slightly to the side as though the security droid's damaged auditory receptors have picked up a foreign sound. A few seconds later, Aaron hears it too: a tiny, mechanical whimper, eminating from inside of the closet. As the older smuggler watches, his curiosity mounting, Abi gets down on all fours and opens a cleverly concealed panel in the closet floor. After a few more seconds, she straightens, holding what must be a bright blue droid, curled into such a tight, protective ball that its features are utterly indistinguishable. Its only identifying characteristic is a soft, electronic whistle that Aaron knows is a cry of pain.  
"Is it damaged?" he asks quietly.  
"Not outwardly," Abi replies, a puzzled expression playing across her face. "But something must be wrong with it; it's been like this for days."  
"Where did you get it?"  
"I found it wandering around in the forest," says Abi, trying in vain to pry the machine's dextrous, multi-jointed fingers away from its face. "There was no sign of a master."  
As the female smuggler continues her efforts to force the droid from its protective ball, it lets out a long, sharp shriek, its entire body wracked with tremors. Abi sighs, removing a stun gun from a holster at her side.  
"I've had to do this at least a dozen times," she mutters, deactivating the safety with a soft click and leveling the weapon at the tiny ball in her arms. "I think its master put it on remote lockdown as soon as it went missing; I can't debug it for the life of me. It followed me to the speeder the moment I told it to, but now, it just curls into a ball and shakes whenever it sees light. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was afraid."  
That's when K-2SO takes a few, haulting steps forward, following the sound of the other droid's terrified scream.  
"Stop," Aaron commands firmly. "Where do you think you're going?"  
"Oh, nowhere really," his prisoner responds, freezing in place. "I'm just about to make your lives a whole lot easier."  
"You think you might be able to fix that droid," Aaron translates.  
"If you'd let me move, yes."  
Aaron gives Abi a questioning look, and the young woman shrugs, rolling her eyes.  
"At this point, I'll try anything," she mutters.  
Producing a tiny key from his pocket, Aaron unlocks the droid’s wrist binders.  
"Go ahead, K," he says, giving his tall companion a gentle shove.  
At the sound of the nickname, both human and machine flinch, equally shocked at Aaron's use of the familiar term. K-2 recovers much quicker than Aaron, however, and makes his way forward as fast as his considerably damaged legs will allow, continuing until he walks straight into Abi.  
"Will you watch where you're going?" she snaps irritably, shoving him away.  
"That could prove a challenge," the droid replies, gesturing vaguely towards his melted eyes.  
Furious, Abi shoves the still shrieking ball into K-2's searching hands.  
"Just fix it!" she snarls.  
Tenderly, K-2SO begins to stroke the other droid's back, swaying from side to side in a slow, hypnotic pattern. Almost too softly for Aaron to hear, the security droid emits a series of gentle, comforting whistles, speaking in the basic language that all droids seem to know.  
Within five seconds, the other droid's tremors have stopped completely, its pain-filled cry dropping in volume. Then, it lets out a tentative, questioning whistle, releasing one hand from its tiny face to peer at K-2.  
K-2 nods with approval, and the other droid emits a rapid series of cheerful beeps. The former Imperial slave pats his small companion's humanoid head.  
Slowly, tentatively, the blue droid uncurls from its tight, protective ball.  
"She'll be all right," says K-2SO.  
"What was wrong with it?" Abi wants to know.  
"She's terrified," K-2 explains quietly, continuing his gentle swaying motion. "She's lost; she just wants to go home... like me."  
"Right. Home to the middle of the forest, with its imaginary master and nonexistent power supply," Abi scoffs. "That's ridiculous; it's probably short-circuiting. Now give it here; we need to take a closer look at it."  
K-2 starts towards Abi, but the moment she reaches for her tiny prisoner, it emits another piercing shriek, clinging to K-2SO and hiding its face against its protector's mechanical chest. The tall droid backs away hurriedly, murmuring something in the little droid's ear and patting its head gently.  
"She won't go back to you," K-2 murmurs as the other droid's body relaxes once more. "She says you hurt her."  
Abi shakes her head in puzzlement.  
"I don't know what it's talking about," she says. “I haven’t damaged it in any way."  
"Did you use an electromagnet on it?" Aaron inquires.  
"Yes," she replies, "several actually. I was testing the strength of a few new models."  
At these words, K-2 trembles, then wraps his arms tightly around the little droid, who returns the sympathetic embrace with a joyful whistle.  
"Well that might explain it," says Aaron, chuckling slightly at Abi's confusion. "Bring it to me, K-2. It'll be less suspicious that way; I haven't tortured it yet."  
With the smaller droid nestled protectively in his arms, K-2 turns away from Abi, heading back the way he had come.  
He stops about a meter away from Aaron, tilts his head slightly as though measuring a precise angle, then moves to stand on the older smuggler's left side.  
"Oh, so it bumps right into me, but it has no problems finding you," Abi mutters under her breath. "This is such a wonderful day."  
Aaron chuckles, then turns to peer at the droid in K-2's arms. The machine is clearly bipedal, but its tiny legs look far too short and thin to support its weight. It has six arms, positioned at equal intervals around the center of its cylindrical body, and at least two dozen photo receptors glow brightly around the circumference of its domed head.  
"What's it's specialty?" he asks Abi, puzzled. "I've never seen anything like it."  
"Me neither," she admits. "As far as I can tell, it's a blank slate."  
Aaron's mouth falls open in wonder.  
Blank slates are the most coveted droids on the black market, except maybe KX units. The trouble is that they are also very hard to find, let alone catch. They come in all shapes and sizes and contain no preprogrammed data or functions, which also means that they lack basic language skills, obedience protocols, and worst of all, the ability to interface with restraining bolts.  
At least this would explain the droid's erratic behavior. Blank slates are rumored to be quite tempermental when they are first created.  
"You're going to have your hands full with this one," says Aaron.  
"Oh, no I'm not," Abi assures him, giving his shoulder a condescending pat. "You are!"  
"What?" he splutters. "Abi, I've made deliveries for you before, but I can't take care of a blank slate right now! Have you SEEN K-2?"  
The young woman laughs softly.  
"Why yes I have. But it looks to me like they're taking care of each other," she says, gesturing towards K-2SO, who is still rocking gently from side to side with the tiny droid in his arms emitting a soft, contented whirring noise.  
Now it’s Aaron’s turn to roll his eyes.  
"Why is it that I get roped into something every time I visit you?"  
"I'm talented that way," his friend replies. "Now stay there; I have something else to show you. Don’t worry, I won’t make you deliver this one."


	17. K And Abi Do Not Mix

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have returned!!! *Megatron voice* Well now that the barrage of medical issues, schoolwork, and drama is over, here we go again. I'm sure the two people reading this are thrilled beyond words. ;)

As Abi rushes out of the apartment, presumably headed back to her garage, Aaron turns towards K-2SO, who is still swaying, the small, blue droid nestled protectively against his chest.  
"I never imagined KX units to be the touchy-feely sort," he comments dryly.  
"Oh, we're not," K-2 assures him. "But this is the optimal course of action to restore her emotional well-being. You still want me to repair her, don't you?"  
But even as his prisoner utters these words, Aaron can't help but notice that K-2's tone is a little less tense and guarded than it had been just five minutes before. Calming that little droid could be helping the blind captive more than he would care to admit.  
"Of course," he says. "Carry on then."  
K-2SO continues his motion until the droid begins to squirm in his arms. Laughing, he places it gently on the apartment's thinly carpeted floor, then collapses onto his back, his arms and legs spread wide so that his tall frame takes up almost half of the tiny room.  
"What are you doing now?" asks Aaron, heaving an exasperated sigh.  
"What does it look like? I'm resting."  
"You don't need rest. You're a droid."  
"I do if my battery is next to empty," he retorts quietly, "but thank you for the reminder. Here I was thinking I was a wookie."  
"But you're supposed to last two weeks before needing a charge!"  
"That was BEFORE I was blinded and shot in the back," K-2 replies as though it is the most obvious statement in the galaxy. "Most of my systems are working at least twice as hard as they normally would just to keep me alive and somewhat aware of my environment."  
"Well I never thought my repairs would be perfect," Aaron responds tersely, fighting to conceal a fresh burst of sympathy.  
"You repaired me," the droid mutters thoughtfully. "That explains so much."  
"I wouldn't take that train of thought any further if I were you," Aaron cautions.  
"Well of COURSE you wouldn't! If you were me, there would no longer be an Aaron to insult. Unless..." K-2 gives an involuntary shudder. "Unless I became you."  
"What's so bad about being me?"  
"Based upon your current age, diet, and level of physical activity, you only have about 15 years and three months to enjoy full mobility and intellect," he explains casually, "whereas I could last for over a century, with proper maintenance and access to a stable power supply."  
Now it's Aaron's turn to shudder.  
"I did not need to know that, K!" he snaps.  
"Then why did you ask to know my reasoning?"  
Before Aaron can decide whether to continue their debate or simply end it by yanking out the droid's power core, he hears a loud thump from the general direction of the door.  
The little blank slate droid shrieks, cowering on the floor beside K-2SO's prone form. Appearing almost as frightened as his small friend, K-2 stumbles to his feet, his head moving quickly back and forth as though looking for the source of the sound.  
Not wasting any time, Aaron dashes over to the door, peering at the security monitor... to reveal Abi, carrying a large cage and looking extremely irritated. As he opens the door for his friend, Aaron notices that she has a rapidly-swelling bruise underneath her left eye.  
"What happened to you?" he asks, his voice cracking in surprise and concern.  
"This kriffing droid happened!" she snaps, slamming the cage onto the table where he had eaten lunch and rushing to open the refrigeration unit.  
After about 15 seconds of searching, she closes the door and turns back towards him, an ice pack held over her eye.  
Just on the edge of his peripheral vision, he sees the blank slate dart behind K-2's legs, quivering with terror. But Abi doesn't seem to notice; she is too busy muttering an alphabet's worth of intergallactic curse words.  
Aaron knows that he should probably stay back, but his curiosity gets the better of him. He crosses the room in two strides, then bends forward to peer through the cage bars at the offending droid.  
What he sees is certainly not what he was expecting.  
"Seriously, Abi?" he sputters, turning to face his friend. "You have a black eye because of that? How did it even REACH your eye?!"  
"Just... don't ask," she responds, collapsing into the chair farthest from the cage. "Let's just say that I need to brush up on my hand-to-hand combat skills. At least I had my stun gun nearby."  
Once again, Aaron stares at the unconscious droid in the bottom of the cage, struggling to keep a straight face.  
"The great Abi Kean, brought down by a tiny maintenance machine! What is it, an astromech?"  
"No," she replies through clenched teeth. "Well, not completely."  
Aaron furrows his brow, puzzled.  
With its diminutive height, cylindrical body, and small wheels, it certainly looks like one. But on closer examination, the older smuggler notices a few, subtle differences.  
This droid's head isn't a dome, not exactly. It looks more like a golden oval, now that he thinks about it. Plus, it appears just a couple decimeters short to be an astromech unit.  
"Then what is it?"  
"That's the thing, Aaron; it doesn't have a designation or a serial number or anything. I don't know its language, but it's pretty clear that it wasn't created in a factory. I think it's composed of parts from other machines."  
"This keeps getting weirder and weirder," Aaron mutters. "Well I probably don't know its language any better than you do. K-2SO, do you think you could interpret for us?"  
"Of course I can," the prisoner responds. "But you're both droid smugglers. Shouldn't you be able to understand a little of our language?"  
"Oh, don't worry... K, is it?" Abi replies patronizingly. "I have no need of understanding your words; you all think the same way."  
"If that is the case, I'm surprised that you failed to predict that droid's attack."  
In a flash, Abi reaches into her pocket, retrieving what appears to be a tiny remote control. Leveling it at K-2's head, she presses a sequence of buttons.  
Less than half a second later, the security droid collapses, his hands flying to his forehead as a confused, terrified cry escapes him.  
"Do you have any other suggestions?" she asks icily.  
K-2 tries to reply, but all that escapes him is a quiet grunt of pain.  
In an instant, the blank slate droid has emerged from its hiding place, emitting a gentle whistle as it sits beside K-2, stroking his head with its tiny hand. After about ten seconds of this, K-2 sits up groggily, shuddering. His small friend pats his hand, chirps softly, and wanders off.  
"Remember that the next time you feel the need to point out an error in my ways," says Abi, pocketing her remote and making her way over to the cage holding the third droid.  
Carefully, she reaches through the bars to flip its power switch, then jumps back quickly as the machine's lights blink on.  
"Ask it what it is," she tells K-2.  
Jolting upright, the mysterious third droid emits a peculiar series of beeps and whistles that sound almost like garbled human speech.  
"His name is Chopper," says K-2, his head tilted defiantly towards Abi, "and he would like you to know that he can understand you just fine."


	18. Chaos By Way of Chopper

"Chopper? What kind of a name is that?" Abi sniggers, raising her eyebrows in disbelief. "Who created you?"  
"Classified," K-2 responds after a short, dismissive beep from Chopper.  
"This can go one of two ways," she replies, producing a screwdriver and restraining bolt remote from her tool belt and taking two massive strides closer to Chopper's tiny, metal prison. "You can tell me what I want to know, or I can shoot you with an immobilizer, unscrew your front panel, and brute-force hack my way into your ROM while you're still conscious." [For non-computer people, that basically means she would slowly and painfully break into his long-term memory bank.]  
Chopper produces a long sequence of short, loud beeps and whistles, and K-2SO covers his face and turns away, clearly trying to conceal his amusement.  
"What's it saying?" Abi inquires.  
"Based on your personality profile," the droid responds, still holding back laughter, "there is a 95% chance that you will harm me if I translate that. Suffice it to say that he chooses option B. I, for one, would like to see you try."  
"Right then," says Abi, carefully aiming her remote at the tiny bump that is the droid's restraining bolt.  
But before she can immobilize Chopper, a harsh alarm tears through the air.  
Panicked, the blank slate jumps out from its hiding place and wraps two of its little arms around K-2's leg. Seeming equally terrified, the blind droid scoops his tiny companion into his arms once more. Almost subconsciously, K-2 crosses the room to stand beside Chopper's cage.  
For his part, Chopper emits a series of exasperated beeps.  
"And what makes you so sure that's your crew come to rescue you?" K-2 demands, speaking loudly to be heard over the blaring klaxon. "The galaxy does not revolve around you, you know."  
Chopper gives a dismissive whistle, and K-2 glares in his general direction.  
Ignoring the droids' bickering, Abi hurries to her security monitor.  
"No sign of an intruder at any windows or doors," she tells Aaron, perplexed. "It could be a malfunction. Unless..."  
Hurrying over to her datapad, Abi taps feverishly at the screen, gasps, then faces her friend, her eyes wide with terror.  
"It's an Imperial battle station," she explains, her voice quavering. "Aaron, it's the size of a moon, and it's headed straight for Alderaan!"  
Shocked, Aaron runs over to Abi's datapad, peering over her shoulder at the network of satellite images showing various sections of the Alderaan system.  
"So THAT's the weapon that destroyed Scariff," is all he can think to say.  
Zooming closer and closer to the blue planet is a round, metal object, about the size of Alderaan's smallest moon. The station's rapid movement blurs the satellite images so badly that he can't make out much detail past its menacing array of laser cannons.  
Her sharp smuggler's instincts taking over, Abi rushes into the other room and begins shoving ration packs, bottles of water, and dozens of unidentifiable gadgets into a small backpack.  
"Mobilize the droids," she calls from the next room. "We have to run for it, now!"  
"K, carry Chopper's cage," Aaron orders. "I'll take the blank slate."  
"Do I HAVE to?" K-2SO implores. "I find him highly irritating."  
"Shut him down if you have to," Aaron replies tersely. "We don't have time for your fight right now."  
Grabbing a second, full pack from underneath the kitchen table, Abi rushes back into the living room.  
"Let's move," she calls as she tosses one of the packs at Aaron and touches a control panel on the wall, causing the apartment door to slide open with a soft, pneumatic hiss.  
Feeling slightly detached from the situation, Aaron slings the bag over one shoulder and practically rips the blank slate from K-2's grasp. The gray-haired smuggler is almost too preoccupied to hear the little droid's frantic cries as K-2 lets go, reaching for the cage instead.  
"Hold still, or you won't make it out of here in one piece," he hears K-2 scold a loudly protesting Chopper.  
The blank slate's screams of fear and confusion echo down the hall as Aaron sprints through the door after Abi. K-2SO chases after his friend's cries, Chopper bouncing noisily around his cage.  
"K-2," says Aaron, "get in front of me. I can guide you from behind."  
Without hesitation, the former security droid dashes forward, stepping smoothly in front of Aaron.  
"I still doubt the integrity of this method," he mutters as Aaron places a hand on his back, half shoving, half guiding him towards the blue speeder that had taken them to the apartment.  
Hurriedly, Aaron tosses the blank slate through the door of the cargo hold, prompting another frantic, terrified shriek, and K-2 clambers through the doorway after his friend. Pushing the gate-like door shut behind the droids, Aaron jumps into the front passenger seat, and Abi drives away at top speed.  
Apparently, the female smuggler is the only one who knows about the Death Star's imminent arrival; no one else appears to be in any particular hurry. In fact, most drivers are staring at them, surprised and confused by their unusually high speed.  
"Shouldn't we try to warn them?" Aaron inquires.  
"Not worth it," his friend replies tersely. "Most of them aren't prepared; it would only cause panic."  
A few minutes later, they screech to a halt just outside of the hangar where Aaron had left his ship.  
Abi pulls the dore open, and together, they move to the cargo hold and practically pull the droids out.  
"Take them," says Abi, gesturing at the confused and frightened prisoners. "They'll be much safer with you than they would with me."  
"Why, where are you going?" asks Aaron with some concern.  
"Where do you think?" she responds, a mischievous smile spreading across her face. "I'm off to collect intel about this new battle station."  
"Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?!" Aaron splutters, his face draining of color as the blank slate continues to wail.  
"I have some guesses," she responds coolly.  
"I won't let you do this," says Aaron, stepping in front of his friend.  
"You can't stop me, you know," she retorts. "If you waste time trying, we'll both die. Besides, I am a grown woman, one who is well aware of the possible consequences of my actions."  
Sighing heavily, Aaron steps aside.  
"Fine," he says, his voice shaking with emotion. "Just... be careful."  
"Aren't I always?"  
"No."  
"That's fair," she concedes with a small smile. "Make sure you get a good price for those droids, OK?"  
Without another word, she runs across the hangar, presumably towards her ship.  
"Well, come on then," says Aaron, shoving K-2SO towards the Imperial freighter in which they had arrived and opening the cargo hold's ramp with his remote control.  
His prisoner clambers aboard with Chopper, and Aaron follows closely behind, carrying the squirming blank slate.  
"This is a situation in which an astromech droid would be very convenient," he mutters to himself, dropping the blank slate and sprinting towards the cockpit.  
"Actually," K-2 replies, setting Chopper's cage on the ship's smooth metal floor and hurrying after the smuggler, "this is a situation in which I would be very convenient."  
"No," Aaron sans flatly, "you're not setting foot in my cockpit."  
"I won't betray you, you know," the captive points out. "It wouldn't be in my best interest. Working with you increases my chances of survival by 56.8%."  
"No more arguments," says Aaron, opening the cargo hold's door and rushing into the hallway. "Don't leave this room or I'll chain you to the wall again."  
***  
Once Aaron pushes the massive door shut behind him, K-2SO takes a seat beside the terrified blank slate.  
"You're OK now," he murmurs, stroking the tiny droid's head. "He won't hurt you like Abi."  
The droid lets out what K-2 swears is an electronic coo.  
A few seconds later, he hears an indignant shriek from Chopper.  
"What do you want?" he asks, irritated.  
"Oh, I don't know," Chopper replies in his language, "galactic peace? My crew? FREEDOM?!"  
"Oh, that," says K-2, reaching towards the droid's cage. "Where's the lock?"  
"Up 20 centimeters."  
"What kind of a smuggler leaves the key in the padlock?" K-2 wonders aloud.  
"An organic," Chopper mutters as his cage door pops open with a soft click.  
The second K-2 moves out of the way, Chopper darts out of the cage, does a few 360s, then falls to the floor.  
"It's about time!" he exclaims.  
"Why did you attack Abi?" K-2 inquires as he makes his way back towards the blank slate.  
"She was annoying me," his companion responds. "Besides, she had me trapped in that cage for two weeks."  
K-2 gives an involuntary shudder.  
Suddenly, the ship's engine hums to life, and he feels an abrupt sensation of weightlessness as they accelerate upward. The blank slate squeals with delight, wrapping a tiny hand around K-2's mechanical finger.  
"First space flight then?" the former Imperial droid inquires, laughing.  
"That is one irritating unit," Chopper comments loudly.  
"She's not as irritating as you," K-2 responds.  
K-2 hears a soft whirring as Chopper rolls a little closer.  
"A boy on my crew used to call me irritating almost every day," he says, a faraway tone entering his voice. "He called me a lot of other things, too."  
"My master called me a rebel all the time," K-2 remembers aloud.  
"Mine once threatened to ditch me on an Imperial cruiser full of illegal battle droids."  
"I wonder why," K-2 mutters, his voice dripping sarcasm.  
Suddenly, he feels an uncomfortably strong tingling sensation on his arm, followed by a sharp burst of pain and a snort of laughter from Chopper.  
"You did not just zap me."  
"Oh, I did."  
As they enter hyperspace, exiting the Alderaan system for the last time, K-2SO begins to chase Chopper around the large, enclosed space, screaming wholly unrealistic threats as the smaller droid giggles maniacally, staying just out of his reach.  
The two are so involved that they almost miss the sound of the door sliding open.  
"What's going on in here?" Aaron demands.  
Having picked up far too much momentum to stop quickly enough, K-2 stumbles into Chopper, and the two land in a tangled heap at Aaron's feet.  
"Nothing," K-2 assures him.  
The blank slate giggles.  
After a few seconds of bemused staring, Aaron shakes his head wearily.  
"You know what? I don't want to know. Just don't damage each other; Abi put you through enough already."  
With that, he walks out of the room and shuts the door behind him.  
"I think we'll get along just fine," says Chopper, his small frame still entangled in K-2's spindly limbs.  
"I agree," K-2 answers. "Unless you zap me again that is."  
"I make no promises."  
With that, they burst into uncontrollable laughter.


	19. In Which We Meet Many New Characters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Although these new characters are absolutely amazing, I cannot take full credit for them. They were created by Dauntless Dagger over on figment.com . If you'd like to know more about them, go check out her fic "Children of the Galaxy".

It isn't unusual for C2M9 to be terrified. Ever since he was shot with an immobilization beam while looking after his master's children and dragged aboard Abi Keen's starship three standard months ago, his life had been nothing short of a nightmare, a parade of abuse, neglect, and agony. Every day has been more horrific than the last, each new torment reminding him just what it means to be totally powerless, at the complete mercy of a deranged gangster and his sadistic henchmen. The only good things in his world are his new friends: terrified, stolen droids like himself. Together, they keep each other from collapsing into delirious panic.  
However, the fear he is experiencing now is altogether different from the constant terror he has felt ever since his enslavement.  
No, he decides, this new emotion isn't fear, not exactly. It is mixed with a feeling he hasn't had in a very long time: excitement.  
This combination is the same feeling he had experienced when he was first sold as an interpretor to his rightful master: a kind, deaf man with identical twin girls.  
'This is anticipation,' C2 realizes as he scurries after 21B7 through the labyrinthine corridors of Jabba's enormous palace.  
The tall medical droid walks with a fluid, confident gate, threading his way through the crowd of half-drunk organics with his head held high as though he belongs here. C2, on the other hand, does everything he can to stay in B's shadow, staring hard at the ground with his single remaining eye. Ever since they met while working together to heal one of Jabba's injured bounty hunters, the protocol droid had envied B's courage, his ability to ignore fear and fly under the radar no matter the circumstances.  
C2M9 is all too aware of how conspicuous he is compared to his friend. If he gives them away... well, they may never get another chance to help K-2SO.  
With a great deal of effort, the terrified droid stares directly at the midpoint between B's shoulders, carefully placing one foot in front of the other in perfect time with his companion's sure steps.  
"Are you sure you know where we're going?" C2 inquires, narrowly dodging a terrified-looking cleaning droid hurrying in the opposite direction.  
"Positive," 21B7 replies gently. "It's the third door on the right."  
C2 nods, taking his friend's word for fact.  
Ever since he was captured a year and a half ago, the kind medical droid had made it his mission to learn anything and everything he could about the palace, guards, his fellow slaves, and even Jabba himself, claiming that the data would be invaluable one day. Although he used to think that it was just B's way of coping with understimulation and releasing the nervous tension that runs through all of them, C2 now understands what a good idea it had truly been.  
"All right then," he says, "let's go. We only have a few days until K-2 arrives."  
That's when it happens. As C2 jogs through the doorway that B had pointed out, he feels the floor underneath him disappear. Before he can so much as scream, he is tipping forward, sliding face-first into nothingness.  
A few agonizing seconds later, he feels 21B7's strong arms around him, stopping his sharp descent and pulling him carefully back onto flat ground.  
"I'm so sorry, C2," he murmurs sympathetically, helping the shaking protocol droid to a seated position against the far wall. "I completely forgot... Are you all right?"  
"Yes," he responds softly, wrapping his arms around his knees and ducking down to form a protective ball. "I ought to be used to it by now."  
The day EV9D9 removed his primary photo receptor, he hadn't just lost half of his peripheral vision like an organic would have. Gone, too, were any concepts of height, distance, or depth. What his backup camera had perceived as nothing more than a series of black lines on the polished, tile floor was actually a steep flight of stairs, descending into nothingness.  
His complete lack of depth perception hadn't really been a safety concern when R3 was around, as his little counterpart had always steered him away from any danger. Plus, the astromech couldn't negotiate stairs due to his wheels, so they had ridden turbolifts whenever they could. But now that R3 is gone, the guards won't let him get away with that anymore. They think it's amusing to watch him trip over steps and reach for things that are actually two meters away. As if it isn't humiliating enough to walk around with a sheet of transparent plastic over his eye socket...  
"It's OK," B assures him, patting his back gently, "there's nothing to be ashamed of. It isn't your fault. Now I'm no R3, but I think I can get you down. Ready?"  
C2 nods timidly, rising to a standing position.  
B moves to stand in front of him, balancing precariously on the edge of the top step.  
"They're about two decimeters deep," his friend explains. "You can hold onto me if you think you're about to lose your balance."  
"Thank you," C2 responds, relief coursing through his circuits as they begin to descend, one behind the other.  
"Don't mention it," says the medical droid, the ever-present undertone of sympathy in his voice growing.  
When they reach the bottom of the stairs, they turn a corner and stop at a thick, durasteel door. With unnerving confidence, B knocks three times on the thick, metal door. A few tense seconds later, it opens a crack to reveal a single green eye.  
"Password?" a high, childlike voice demands.  
"Onijin is the most amazing BRAT of all time and Samuel is a poop," B says resignedly, his gaze drifting towards the ceiling in exasperated boredom.  
"You may enter," the voice intones after a short pause.  
The door groans in protest as it is pulled open the rest of the way, and B hurries through, followed closely by C2M9. After the door slams shut with an ominous BOOM, the translator droid gazes around the cavernous, underground space, his backup camera struggling to adjust to the dim lighting.  
The first thing he notices is the girl. The short, black hair framing her face makes her large, green eyes seem brighter than the flickering lighting strips above them.  
"Who are you?" she inquires, taking in his battered frame. "I've never seen you around."  
"My designation is C2M9, miss," he replies, holding back a tremor of fear. "Y-you wouldn't see me that often; I'm usually in Jabba's throne room."  
"C2, I've been coming down here for months. She's harmless," B assures his friend, chuckling.  
"Harmless?!" the girl repeats, sounding greatly offended. "Try telling that to Jabba's idiots... oops, I mean guards."  
She turns back to C2, her gaze sparkling with friendly interest.  
"Hi!" she says cheerfully, extending a tiny hand towards him. "I'm Onijin."  
He is so surprised that he momentarily freezes. He has seen organics shake hands countless times, but never once had the courtesy been extended to him, a mere droid.  
Hesitantly, half-expecting it to disappear, he reaches forward and takes Onijin's hand in his own. Her slanted, green eyes fill with unmistakable sympathy as she gazes up at the empty socket that used to contain C2's right photo receptor.  
"Was it EV9D9?" she inquires.  
C2 nods mutely, and Onijin gives his hand a gentle squeeze before letting go. The injured droid gazes down in wonderment, overwhelmed by this simple act of kindness from an organic, and Onijin grins sheepishly.  
"Here, want a charger pack?" she offers, holding out a black, plastic rectangle.  
"Really?" he asks, his voice quavering with cautious hope.  
"Of course, silly!" she replies.  
Astonished, C2M9 reaches in the general direction of the pack until his hand makes contact with its cool, smooth surface.  
"Be careful though," Onijin cautions, "it has a lot more juice than you're used to."  
The moment that C2 fastens the device to his port, he feels a rush of energy enter his system, so powerful that he jolts upright, shaking a little.  
"Sheesh, it's like you haven't gotten a charge in weeks! How strictly do they ration power up there?" Onijin wants to know.  
"Very," C2 responds. "Some of us pass out in the middle of our jobs."  
Onijin grimaces.  
"And I thought our food situation was bad," she mutters. "Anyway, how much do you know?"  
"About you? Almost nothing."  
"Well I live below the dungeons for one."  
"Below the dungeons?" the silver droid repeats. "I didn't think there was anything below the dungeons."  
"They don't tell you guys ANYTHING!" she remarks. "There's a group of orphans living down here. We call ourselves the BRATS."  
"Pardon my saying so, but that is not a particularly flattering title," C2 replies softly.  
Onijin bursts into loud peels of laughter.  
"It might not be flattering," she says between huge gasps, "but it sure describes us perfectly."  
Suddenly, the girl's laughter turns into a fit of spasmodic coughing and she doubles over, gasping for air. Without missing a beat, 21B7 reaches into a hidden compartment in his chest, extracts an inhaler, uncaps it, and hands it to Onijin.  
"Thanks," she manages to choke out before taking a puff.  
"How did you know?" C2 inquires, stunned.  
"She's had asthma since she was four," the medical droid explains. "She doesn't keep up with her treatment, so I assumed she would need it."  
"I guess I've been too busy saving the galaxy," the child responds after taking her second puff.  
B kneels so that he is at eye-level with the tiny girl.  
"Onijin, you have to take better care of yourself. If you don't, you won't be able to save the galaxy nearly as efficiently. Do you understand?"  
"Yes," she replies guiltily.  
"Good. Now, here is a new canister for your nebulizer. I understand that Samuel used the last one as slingshot ammunition to incapacitate a guard?"  
"It's a long story," Onijin replies with a grin. "Let's just say that Obnoxious Goon #17 might be visiting the med-bay soon with a rather large bump on his head and a case of constant sneezing."  
"All right then. I still have a little sneezing powder antidote left over from the last incident."  
"Oh, but wouldn't it be so much more fun to leave him like that?"  
"That runs counter to my programming. Besides, Jabba would start to wonder about me."  
"You run up and down the halls every night, B," Onijin reminds the droid with a laugh. "He already wonders."  
"Fair enough," he replies, patting her lightly on the head. "Is Samuel awake?"  
"No, but he will be in a second!" she answers, sprinting through a door across the cavern.  
"That child is quite peculiar," C2M9 tells his friend.  
"She's also quite resilient," the other droid replies. "You have no idea how many messes she's gotten herself into."  
"How do you know about her? The supervisors never told us anything, did they?"  
"Of course not; they don't even bother to look at us most of the time, let alone show us the secret passageways. We found each other wandering the halls one night. She was out looking for food."  
"Alone?" C2 asks, incredulous.  
He would hate to see the tiny girl wandering up and down the halls, peering through each door with wide, frightened eyes.  
"Yes," B confirms, "but trust me; she is more than capable of holding her own."  
Just then, they hear an enraged scream, followed by a high, maniacal giggle.  
"Here they come now," says B with a heavy sigh.  
Less than five seconds later, Onijin rushes back through the door carrying a half-empty water pistol, chased by a tall, skinny boy with wet, black hair.  
"B, help!" the boy screams as Onijin aims and fires, hitting him squarely in the face.  
Gracefully, the medical droid steps between the children. In a blur of movement, he pulls the water gun from Onijin's small hands, empties its contents into a nearby bucket, then hands it back.  
"Hey!" Onijin cries, her eyes wide with shock.  
"Thank you!" says the boy with a self-satisfied smile.  
"You attacked me! How does that not... run counter to your programming?" Onijin demands.  
"Are you hurt?" the droid inquires.  
"Well... no, not really."  
"Do you have a preexisting condition that prevents you from withstanding mild to moderate arm strain?"  
"I don't think so...?"  
"Were you using that weapon to attack another life form?"  
"Yes, she was!" says Samuel, his hair dripping wet.  
"Am I carrying any preexisting obedience protocols linked to your well-being?" asks B.  
"No. Samuel took your obedience thingies off," Onijin responds.  
"That's how."  
"Ugh, you're no fun!" she exclaims, shaking her now empty squirt gun in frustration.  
"Fun is my tertiary objective when treating juvenile organics," B replies, obviously holding back a laugh. "Violations in the primary and secondary objective areas have temporarily overridden those protocols."  
"Are you TRYING to make no sense?" Onijin inquires, dramatically rubbing her temples as though she has a terrible headache.  
"Not necessarily," B responds, amusement evident in his tone.  
"Enough," the tall boy snaps at Onijin.  
The girl glares at him, her slanted, green eyes narrowing in annoyance.  
"B, are you bored again?" he asks gently, his compassionate gaze landing on the medical droid's swaying form. "Do you need a little holonet time?"  
"Samuel, I could always use more holonet time," he responds longingly. "But that's not why I came. I'm afraid this is urgent."  
"If it's really important, shouldn't someone get Vagaleena?"  
"No, I don't want to disturb her; that poor girl barely gets any sleep as it is. We require nothing more than your mechanical expertise."  
Samuel rubs his eyes blearily, then turns to face C2.  
"Wow," he murmurs, stepping closer. "What happened here?"  
"EV9D9," Onijin blurts, stomping her foot in frustration. "If I ever get my hands on her..."  
"I'm not the reason we came," C2 interrupts before the girl can continue her no doubt complicated and terrifying threat. "There's someone who needs help much more than me."  
"Who?" Samuel inquires. "Where?"  
C2 tells the children about his brief conversation with K-2SO. At first, he speaks with a timid stutter, his eye focused intently on the ground. But as he recounts the story of the peculiar security droid, the two orphans seem so enthralled, their eyes so wide and alert with interest, that a little tension drains from C2's posture. Before he realizes what has happened, he is gazing right at them. This would never have been allowed on the higher levels of the palace; organics usually despise it when droids stare at them for too long, and never so much as glance at them unless they absolutely have to. But as C2 finishes, Onijin and Samuel stare directly into his single, mechanical eye, their expressions reflecting nothing but interest and concern.  
'Do they not know any better?' C2 thinks to himself, confused.  
"So he's blind," Samuel mutters to himself. "Do either of you have any idea why?"  
"No, sir," the translator droid responds, his hands beginning to clench and unclench in worry. "I am sorry, I have already mentioned all I learned about him. Our conversation was very brief."  
"Awe, don't worry about it," Samuel replies gently. "You've been really helpful. What's your name?"  
"I'm C2M9."  
To his complete shock, Samuel's face lights up with delighted recognition.  
"Wait a minute," he says slowly. "Do you know an R3V6?"  
The droid is so surprised that he staggers backward into B, who catches him, then gently pushes his friend back into a standing position.  
"He was my counterpart," C2 replies in a small voice.  
"Was?" Onijin repeats, confused. "What happened?"  
"Miss, he vanished two days ago, and Master Jabba has made it very clear that he has no intentions of assembling a search party," C2 replies quietly, turning away as his whole body begins to tremble from sadness. "R3 is gone... forever."  
A second later, he feels Samuel's comforting hand on his shoulder.  
"C2," he murmurs gently, "might I just say that Jabba is a complete and utter butthead?"  
"You're not kidding," C2M9 replies, so quietly that he isn't entirely sure whether he has spoken aloud.  
That's when Onijin bursts out laughing.  
"Butthead!" she exclaims. "That's perfect!"  
Before he realizes what has happened, C2 is laughing, too, then Samuel and B. As they laugh together, what feels like hundreds of memories of R3 cascade through C2's mind. Their first meeting, the day after C2's abduction; R3 comforting him after the loss of his eye; the time R3 got so homesick that he entered low-power mode for three days; every single night of terror they spent huddled together in their containment cube.  
"R3 would have loved you," he tells Onijin after a long, quiet pause.  
"From what Samuel has told me, he sounds wonderful," she replies quietly, sounding sad and distant. "I would have loved him, too."  
"Anyway," says Samuel, his voice thick with emotion, "since we don't know exactly how K-2 lost his vision, I don't want to steal new photo receptors for him only to learn that the problem is in his graphics processing chip or a connecting cable."  
"So what will you do?" Onijin inquires, gazing up at the older boy with what can only be described as open admiration.  
"If we can't restore his vision," the boy replies, "we'll just have to give him a different way of seeing."  
"Do you mean..." B trails off, stunned.  
"Oh yes!" Samuel responds, his eyes sparkling with glee. "Sonar, here we come!"


	20. Little Rebel

Chopper has spent nearly every waking moment since his capture analyzing scenarios. He has considered dozens of escape plans, hundreds of ways in which he might contact his crew back on the Ghost, and exactly 10,372 limericks insulting Abi, Aaron, Ezra, and the Empire in 29 languages.  
However, none of his projections, calculations, or highly inappropriate rhymes had included being held prisonerin the cargo hold of a hijacked Imperial freighter with a blind security droid and a baby organic trapped in a droid's body.  
Currently, six hours after their hurried departure from Alderaan, he is engaged in what he swears is the most pointless argument in galactic history.  
"For the twenty-fourth time," K-2SO says, slowly and carefully, "Darth Vader does not have hair. His cranium is too badly damaged."  
"How would you know anyway?" Chopper demands. "You've never seen him without his helmet."  
"True," K admits. "But I came from the Rebel base; I've heard enough horror stories to overload your tiny little processor. Besides, how would YOU know?"  
"It just makes sense, OK?" the little astromech snaps.  
"Chopper, when was the last time you got your logic circuits checked?" the tall droid inquires, his tone almost sounding gentle.  
That does it.  
Chopper had suffered two weeks locked in a tiny cage, being poked and prodded by Abi's computers and instruments. All of this he had tolerated, if barely. He had come close to killing the human on multiple occasions; Hera would have been proud of his self-restraint. But pity, especially from K-2SO, is not something he can withstand.  
"My logic circuits are none of your—"  
Before Chopper can finish his furious statement, the blank slate moves to stand between the two of them.  
"No," she says, so quietly that Chopper isn't sure whether he has really heard anything.  
"No what?" K-2 asks gently, bending so that his head is at the blank slate's level.  
(Although the little droid was totally mute when she was first dragged aboard Aaron's starship, she is learning exceptionally fast. It seems that all she ultimately required was emersion, which Chopper and K-2SO are inadvertently providing through their complex arguments.)  
"No hair," the blank slate announces brightly.  
"See?" K-2 yells triumphantly. "I TOLD you!"  
"Oh, give me a break," Chopper replies dismissively. "That unit is just a baby looking for attention."  
The tiny blank slate flails all six of her arms in indignation. Turning to face Chopper, she activates her holoprojector, and the astromech droid sees one of the most disturbing things in his memory bank.  
The hologram appears to be of some kind of transparent capsule. Its walls are coated with mist, but even through the fog, it is all to easy to make out the form inside. It is that of a human, almost as large as the capsule itself. The giant floats in the center of the peculiar fog, his face turned away from the camera. But the back of his head is all too visible, and it certainly does not include hair.  
Chopper can't even call it skin, not really. It is a mass of scar tissue so thick and raw that it possesses a texture similar to that of a bantha's hide.  
"How did you get that holo?" he demands, staring hard at the blank slate as though he can see right into her hard drive.  
The tiny droid shudders, moving to stand closer to K-2SO.  
"Hurry up, droid," snaps a raspy voice from inside of the capsule. "I haven't got all day!"  
"He was your old master," K-2 says slowly, "wasn't he?"  
The blank slate shivers once more, and the blind droid sits beside her, awkwardly patting her domed head. Even Chopper finds himself bumping gently against the smaller droid, comforting her as best he can.  
"That's terrible," says K.  
"I- I'm OK," she replies in a tiny, quavering voice.  
"No you're not," K-2 replies in a matter-of-fact tone. "Your hard drive—"  
The blank slate emits a soft, almost imperceptible moan, her body continuing to tremble violently.  
Once again, K-2SO lifts her into his arms, gently swaying from side to side and whistling softly until she grows still once more.  
"Seriously, what's wrong with her?"  
"She's no blank slate," K-2 responds softly. "Her hard drive has been fragmented, worse than I've ever seen it."  
For the first time since his fighter exploded during the Clone Wars, Chopper falls completely silent, struck speechless by the implications of K-2's terrible revelation.  
"So her mind..."  
"Totally shattered," K-2 finishes softly. "She can't even access her primary programming; everything has been scrambled so badly that she has to relearn everything."  
"Who would do that?" Chopper wonders aloud.  
The tiny droid's holoprojector flickers once more, then settles to reveal a tall figure clad in a black cloak.  
"Frag that droid's hard drive, then scrap it!" it barks at a technician standing behind him. "It knows far too much."  
"Who was that?" K-2 inquires.  
"Beats me," says Chopper as the little droid stares blankly and shudders, unable to access any more of the memory. "Just some guy in a cloak."  
"When I find him," K says softly, "he'll get a lot more than a fragged hard drive."  
Chopper laughs.  
"I'm pretty sure you'll have to bust out of here before making threats like that," he tells his new friend. "And probably get yourself some functioning photo receptors."  
"You have a point there," the security droid concedes with a soft chuckle.  
Gingerly, he sets the blank slate back on the ground, and she wanders over to Chopper, nudging him curiously.  
"What's your name anyway?" he asks the smallest droid. "Because I seriously have to stop thinking of you as 'the blank slate'."  
She gazes up at him, the ring of photo receptors around her head blinking rapidly as she tries to remember.  
"Droid," she says after a while.  
"No, that's what you are," says K-2. "What else were you called?"  
"Nuisance," she replies. "Insect. Scrap pile. Freak."  
Positively boiling with protective fury, K-2SO begins to pace around the compartment.  
"Those names are highly inaccurate," he says, quietly and gently. "Can you think of anything else?"  
The tiny droid gazes up at K's ruined eyes, visibly struggling to remember something, anything. After a while, she looks down again, deep sadness evident in her slumped posture.  
"No," she whispers. "All gone."  
"OK, that's it," Chopper explodes. "K, when you go to find that guy in the cloak, I'm coming with you!"  
K-2 laughs shortly, then sits back down beside the downcast droid.  
"Well, your old name probably wasn't all that great anyway," he says gently, stroking one of her tiny hands. "It was just a sequence of letters and numbers, like mine. Do you want a new one?"  
"Yes," she says timidly. "May I?"  
"Of course," the security droid responds gently. "Who do you want to be?"  
"A rebel," she whispers.  
K-2 laughs.  
"Why?"  
"Because... rebels don't kill for fun," she tells him. "They help people."  
K-2SO pats the little droid on her domed head.  
"Very well, Rebel," he replies, his voice adopting an unmistakably happy tone. "You'll be able to help lots of people once we escape."  
"Thank you, Master," Rebel says solemnly.  
"I am not your master, you know," K-2 tells her.  
"Then what are you?" she asks, confused.  
"I am your friend."  
"Friend?" the little droid repeats, her photo receptors blinking on and off in confusion.  
"I'm someone you can trust," says K-2.  
Rebel makes a contented whirring sound.  
"I am your friend, too, K-2SO," she declares.  
"I'm glad," says the former Imperial droid as Rebel runs out of power, her softly glowing eyes dimming one by one.  
"She needs a charger," says Chopper, making his way across the cargo hold.  
"I think we all do," K replies, lying back on the hard, metal floor. "I suggest we enter low power mode."  
"That's not happening," Chopper retorts flatly. "Someone has to keep watch."  
"Fine. Your turn," the taller droid replies before his systems shut down.  
After muttering a few choice words that Hera would definitely not approve of, the astromech droid begins to pace restlessly around the hold.  
As much as he hates to admit it, he is growing rather fond of his new companions.


	21. Why Work Together... When We Can Fight?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's right, my three dedicated fans—I have returned once more! I am so sorry for the massive delays between chapters. My life really took a turn for the chaotic in the last few months, so I haven't had enough time to write anything remotely worth reading in a long time. Well anyway, the point is that I am back! Enjoy!

It's been almost half a day since Chopper was first locked in this cargo hold with the two droids, and it is everything he can do not to simply drive full speed into a wall from the frustration and boredom coursing through his circuits.

At first, he had contented himself with keeping watch: staring intently at the door of their prison and making low, threatening beeping sounds whenever he felt that Aaron was getting too close for comfort. However, since the door is made from solid durasteel about ten centimeters thick and Chopper's warnings serve only to prompt a soft chuckle from Aaron, he had quickly tired of this activity.

'What would Hera do?'

Well, his captain would almost certainly have tried approaching the situation diplomatically, Chopper decides. But diplomacy isn't exactly the best option for an irritable astromech droid with damaged logic circuits, especially when said irritable astromech droid is without a counterpart. The most he could accomplish in the area of polite negotiations would be producing a few garbled, electronic beeps and shrieks.

Optimism was also important to Hera, Chopper recalls. She always tried to notice the good in any situation, then use it to her advantage. Unfortunately, staying positive is not one of Chopper's more refined abilities either.

Well at least he can be thankful for one thing: Abi had left him connected to her computer for so long while trying to hack into his memory that he  
now has enough charge to last for at least two weeks. But his companions are not so lucky. Little Rebel is on reserve power. The only indication that she is not completely dead is a tiny green light on her forehead. K-2 is slightly better off; he lies on his back with Rebel curled against him, dormant save for the occasional twitch as he runs system checks.

'Well that's one way I can make myself useful,' Chopper reasons, gently lifting Rebel's motionless body from the floor.

This procedure would be much simpler with a two-way data cable, but Aaron obviously couldn't be bothered to leave them one, so Chopper must make do with the equipment he has. Anyway, this is no more difficult than half the repairs he had performed on the Ghost, using ill-fitting spare parts and ancient tools with Ezra's sweat all over them.

Expertly, he uses his tiny, built-in screwdriver to open Rebel's maintenance panel, then does the same to his own. He then unplugs his backup power lead and inserts it into the single battery port in Rebel's sophisticated control board.

The second that the cable has been securely connected, Chopper feels a drain on his power cell so profound that he staggers backward to brace himself against a wall.

The two small droids remain like this for about five minutes as energy from Chopper's full power cell flows into Rebel's empty one. When he estimates that her cell is about a third full, the astromech unplugs his cable, reattaches Rebel's front panel, then taps sharply on the other droid's dome to wake her.

She comes back online in an instant, the tiny photo receptors all around her head lighting up one by one as all six of her arms wrap tightly around her trembling body to form a protective cocoon.

"Relax," Chopper commands. "Unless you're somehow responsible for capturing my crew and landing me in this mess, I'm not going to hurt you."

"Chopper!" she chirps in enthusiastic recognition, bouncing up and down and waving her tiny hands. "Hi!"

He leads the tiny droid back to the center of their prison, where she continues to gaze up at him, her attention unwavering.

"What?" Chopper inquires, backing up a few, slow centimeters as his systems continue to reel from the sudden power loss.

"You have charger?" she implores, her high, timid voice quavering slightly from exhaustion.

"Like Aaron would ever leave us with a functioning charging unit," the astromech scoffs, lightly bumping against Rebel's side. "I gave you about a third of my own power; that should last you a few days at least."

The small droid shakes her head, then points behind her at K-2, who remains sprawled across the floor, his long, spindly limbs jutting out at odd angles.

"Oh, you meant a charger for him," Chopper translates to himself, wobbling slightly as he makes his way over to the taller droid. "This would be a whole lot easier if you could talk, you know. I'll see what I can do."

K-2's panel proves much easier to remove than Rebel's had been; the blind security droid had obviously endured many an operation on his inner workings.

Struggling not to think of what Aaron might have done to his fellow captive, Chopper inserts his cable into K-2SO's port. The power transfer goes much quicker this time, so quickly that the astromech begins to keel over from this second unpleasant shock to his system. But before he can hit the ground, Rebel has braced her tiny body against his, just barely managing to steady him.

His gears whining with effort, Chopper heaves himself back into a standing position, glaring down at Rebel. For her part, the little droid giggles and bumps Chopper playfully.

"You're lucky your hard drive is fragged," Chopper replies. "Otherwise I'd zap you for that."

Apparently unconcerned, Rebel hums cheerfully as she watches K-2's power gage rise just out of the red zone. Exhausted, Chopper yanks his cable from the former security droid's back, then slumps against the wall.

Rebel pushes Chopper's front panel back into place with a soft click.

"Thank you," she whispers.

"Yeah, well I couldn't just leave you two like that," he replies gruffly. "Your reserve lights were starting to scare me a little."

Gingerly, Rebel nudges K-2's motionless hand. In an instant, the blind droid has jolted upright, his head moving rapidly from side to side as though he is taking stock of his surroundings.

"Where am I?" he inquires, getting unsteadily to his feet.

"Oh, nowhere important," Chopper responds, making no effort to keep the sarcastic edge out of his voice. "See, we're being held prisoner on a cargo ship in the middle of deep space, headed who-knows-where. How nice of you to join us!"

His systems not yet fully calibrated, K-2 turns in Chopper's general direction, nods, and settles back to the floor.

"Makes sense."

"So that's it then?" Chopper practically screams in frustration. "You're one of the Empire's most advanced strategic analysis droids, and all you can think to say is 'Makes sense'?!"

"No," K retorts coolly. "That's just all I could think to say that wouldn't overtax your obviously limited processing abilities."

"I gave you a third of my power and this is how you repay me?"

"Please, we both know you only did that because you need me in order to get out of here."

"Okay, that's fair," the golden astromech concedes.

K-2 nods as though he expected nothing less.

"Besides," Chopper admits sulkily, "I'm used to having someone to argue with, and Rebel can't really formulate complete sentences yet, so..."

"Are you saying that you missed me?" asks K-2SO, bending so that he is at Chopper's eye level and inclining his head in mock surprise.

"No!"

"Well it sure seems like that to me."

"Not even close. Are you sure I'm the one with the faulty processor, K-2?"

Rebel giggles.

"You little traitor," K mutters, which just causes the tiny droid to laugh even harder.

"Seriously, K," Chopper cuts in before the situation can escalate any further, "as fun as it is being trapped in here with you, I would much prefer to get out of here before I start to rust. We can't stay like this forever; we're all going to need a charge soon enough."

"First of all, we won't have to stay like this forever," the former Imperial droid assures Chopper in an annoyingly condescending tone. "In fact, we'll be out of here in about three standard days."

"How can you be so sure of that?"

"Another droid told me. His name is C2M9; he lives in Jabba's palace."

Suddenly, K-2 jumps to his feet once more.

"Oh, the communicator, I almost forgot!"

"Communicator?" Chopper splutters, dumbstruck. "You've had a communicator this whole time and this is the first I'm hearing of it?"

"Well I don't have a communicator, not exactly," K-2 explains hurriedly. "But I do have a link with Aaron's. Listen, I don't have time to explain. C2 is going to call any minute; he might have even tried already."

Chopper fumes silently as K-2SO's indicator lights begin to flash. A few tense seconds later, the security droid inclines his head in a relieved nod.

"Nothing yet," he mutters, "good."

The next 20 minutes pass in near silence. The only indication that any time has passed at all comes from Chopper's own clock, which Abi could have reset for all he knows. Finally, K-2 jolts upright as though he has been zapped with electricity. A second later, he holds out his and hand towards his companions, and a small hologram of a silver protocol droid hovers just above his palm.

"C2?" he inquires softly.

"K-2?" the hologram replies. "Can you hear me?"

"Loud and clear," K-2 answers. "And I'm not alone anymore; there are two others here with me."

C2M9 chuckles quietly.

"That's funny," he says, "because I was about to tell you the same thing."�


End file.
